[Primer] Nic Fit

[Uyan]

Hello, I'd been collecting fetches for Modern when I thought I'd pop over to Legacy and build a deck for this format, which is where I came to Nic Fit. Below is my current decklist. Of note is I don't have all the necessary dual lands, and I think I might have too much sideboard for Sneak and Show style decks (with 3 Path + Kaya main, 1 Edict, 1 To the Slaughter and 1 Ashen Rider sideboard)

Creatures (15)
4x Veteran Explorer
2x Deathrite Shaman
1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
2x Tireless Tracker
1x Eternal Witness
2x Siege Rhino
1x Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1x Thragtusk
1x Sigarda, Host of Herons

Planeswalkers (4)
2x Nissa, Vital Force
1x Liliana, Death's Majesty
1x Kaya, Ghost Assassin

Enchantments (3)
3x Pernicious Deed

Sorceries (10)
4x Cabal Therapy
4x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Maelstrom Pulse
1x Vindicate

Instants (5)
2x Abrupt Decay
3x Path to Exile

Lands (23)
4x Windswept Heath
4x Verdant Catacombs
2x Overgrown Tomb
1x Savannah
1x Godless Shrine
4x Forest
3x Swamp
2x Plains
1x Volrath's Stronghold
2x Phyrexian Tower

Sideboard (14)
4 Lost Legacy
1x Gaddock Teeg
1x Golgari Charm
1x Ashen Rider
1x Diabolic Edict
1x To the Slaughter
1x Maelstrom Pulse
1x Painful Truths
1x Reclamation Sage
1x Scavening Ooze
1x Thrun, the Last Troll

One question that has been on my mind as I've read through the whole of this forum: where is Liliana, the Last Hope? I say this because her +1 beats lots of early game threats (most notably unflipped Delvers and Young Pyromancer) and it triggers Veteran Explorer at not too late a stage in the game; Pernicious Deed will kill Vet on turn 4, and Liliana of the Veil's -2 is not what you want to be doing to trigger Explorer! She can also flat out win the game by herself with her ult, but if she has been unthreatened for 4+ turns you've probably won anyway.
Any thoughts on Liliana, Death's Majesty would also be appreciated; this list is theory at the moment, slanted towards beating "unfair" decks (e.g. Sneak and Show), and so I haven't yet acquired all the pieces of the deck.

[Brael]

One question that has been on my mind as I've read through the whole of this forum: where is Liliana, the Last Hope? I say this because her +1 beats lots of early game threats (most notably unflipped Delvers and Young Pyromancer) and it triggers Veteran Explorer at not too late a stage in the game; Pernicious Deed will kill Vet on turn 4, and Liliana of the Veil's -2 is not what you want to be doing to trigger Explorer! She can also flat out win the game by herself with her ult, but if she has been unthreatened for 4+ turns you've probably won anyway.
Any thoughts on Liliana, Death's Majesty would also be appreciated; this list is theory at the moment, slanted towards beating "unfair" decks (e.g. Sneak and Show), and so I haven't yet acquired all the pieces of the deck.

Liliana the Last Hope isn't good enough, I gave her a pretty solid try. There's not enough targets for her +1 to kill, I never wanted to use the minus, and the ultimate wasn't good enough. Garruk Relentless is a stronger PW for what Nic Fit is doing. You don't want to run Liliana of the Veil either, because the +1 is really bad for you.

Death's Majesty isn't that great either. For the minus to be any good, you need a threat that was already dealt with, and the plus is way too slow. Compare to Nissa. Nissa gets in for 10 damage in the time Liliana gets in for 2.

The best way to beat unfair decks, is to lower your curve and win faster.

[Arianrhod]

4 Veteran Explorer
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Eternal Witness
1 Fierce Empath
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1 Thragtusk
1 Inferno Titan
1 Woodland Bellower
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Toxic Deluge
3 Night's Whisper
2 Diabolic Intent

2 Lightning Bolt

2 Pernicious Deed
4 Sneak Attack

4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Dryad Arbor
3 Bayou
2 Taiga
2 Badlands
3 Forest
2 Swamp
2 Mountain
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Phyrexian Tower

sb::
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Lost Legacy
1 To the Slaughter
2 Blood Moon
1 Toxic Deluge
2 Engineered Plague
2 Fatal Push
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Chalice of the Void

Running this at my local tomorrow. Sam Higgins is also running a very, very similar list (just a couple of slight sideboard differences) at his local tomorrow night and again Tuesday night, so hopefully that'll give us some actual data.

[Warden]

Math guys / SE guys:

Can anyone provide a quick number crunch on how many creatures or pseudocreatures (lingering souls, combat walkers, fetchlands with dryad arbor) you would want to run in order to justify 2 Diabolic Intents, such that they are live ~90% of the time before turn 5 or so?

I think it's going to end up somewhere around 24ish, but I'd like some actual number crunching to back up my assumption.

If it's too complex of a question, by all means ignore me! Just figured I'd ask.

@Brael has most of this. I'll raise some ideas that possibly justify running that many intents.

Lingering Souls is more than 1 "creature". If you can either flash it back or keep the tokens alive somehow, the odds of intent being a dud decrease. I cannot do the math because it's conditional at best.
Anything with persist also works in your favor. Redcap, Finks, the green Geist dude = additional "creatures" to sac towards intent. The math is difficult to compute again because of persist. I'm not even sure how you'd track that.
I think Brael or someone did the math on Arbor a while back. You'd have to count the number of fetches, green sun's, forest-diggers (wood elves & co.) to generate loose odds. If you go with Arbor as a sac outlet, you might want to copy elves.dec in running a pair. That will likely strain the manabase. I'm sure you're intent-ing into something very important though.

Overall I am not particularly sold on Intent. I think it's really bad in a speedy counter-heavy meta. There's too much room to be X-for-1'ed. Or to have the intent target never enter play (discard or countered).

[Ganfar]

Liliana the Last Hope isn't good enough, I gave her a pretty solid try. There's not enough targets for her +1 to kill, I never wanted to use the minus, and the ultimate wasn't good enough. Garruk Relentless is a stronger PW for what Nic Fit is doing. You don't want to run Liliana of the Veil either, because the +1 is really bad for you.

In Jund P.Fire is The Veil soild. Discard P.Fire and then return it. It's a bit worse now after the Top banning.

[Echelon]

If you go with Arbor as a sac outlet, you might want to copy elves.dec in running a pair. That will likely strain the manabase. I'm sure you're intent-ing into something very important though.

Overall I am not particularly sold on Intent. I think it's really bad in a speedy counter-heavy meta. There's too much room to be X-for-1'ed. Or to have the intent target never enter play (discard or countered).

I beg to differ. Both as an Elves! pilot and long time Intent enthousiast. Just the 1 Arbor is fine. The thing with Intent is that you have to be very careful with it (i.e. only cast it when you know the road is clear). Just keep that in mind and you'll be fine. The card can turn games around completely when timed correctly.

[Bobmans]

Lingering Souls is more than 1 "creature". If you can either flash it back or keep the tokens alive somehow, the odds of intent being a dud decrease. I cannot do the math because it's conditional at best.
Anything with persist also works in your favor. Redcap, Finks, the green Geist dude = additional "creatures" to sac towards intent. The math is difficult to compute again because of persist. I'm not even sure how you'd track that.

I think you still have to count cards like Lingering Souls as one card. This is because you'd have to make the innitial draw of those cards. Actually drawing the cards should be the only factor slash variable and not how many bodies or recasts they leave behind.



Running this at my local tomorrow. Sam Higgins is also running a very, very similar list (just a couple of slight sideboard differences) at his local tomorrow night and again Tuesday night, so hopefully that'll give us some actual data.

Good luck. Not sure if i would bring 2 Intents and Stronghold without Primeval Titan. The Wurmcoil Engine should be awesome, I hope.

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[Echelon]

Not a fan of Crop Rotations? I've really been liking the two of. What's great about them is Ooze is a natural swap for one since you can slide in Bojuka Bog, which means you effectively only have to find one cut, like DRS #3 since Rotation opens up the Tower starts for equal/better acceleration.

That in turn gives you a lot of fun things you can do with the manabase. Oboro with 2 Crop Rotation to find it, plus 4 Trackers, plus 4 GSZ to get them is pretty crazy.

I love the idea of Crop Rotations, but apart from Bojuka Bog I don't own any worthy CR targets. And then there's the ever present question of in what available space to put them.

[Bobmans]

In Jund P.Fire is The Veil soild. Discard P.Fire and then return it. It's a bit worse now after the Top banning.

:-( true, i have been pondering on the PFire list, but it feels that the grind has been taken out of the grind. Currently i have been looking at a slightly different approach that is a bit more lands heavy.
Not all really new elements, rather just a mash-up from what was already there. Mostly i was looking for that synergy between Meren/Arbor/Tracker/Courser/Titania coupled with some ways to finish that game.
All in all i believe PFire lists NEED Liliana of the Veil to add some missing reach. Heres the list for reference (no board, since that's always fluid).
Also in here i was looking for Crop Rotation, but i couldn't find any more room...


1x Dryad Arbor
4x Veteran Explorer
1x Deathrite Shaman
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Eternal Witness
1x Tireless Tracker
1x Courser of Kruphix
1x Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1x Huntmaster of the Fells
1x Thrun, the Last Troll
1x Thragtusk
1x Titania, Protector of Argoth
1x Primeval Titan
4x Green Sun's Zenith
2x Sylvan Library
4x Cabal Therapy
3x Pernicious Deed
2x Abrupt Decay
3x Punishing Fire
3x Liliana of the Veil
1x Nissa, Vital Force
4x Verdant Catacombs
2x Wooded Foothills
1x Bloodstained Mire
3x Forest
2x Swamp
1x Mountain
2x Bayou
1x Taiga
1x Badlands
3x Grove of the Burnwillows
1x Volrath's Stronghold
1x Phyrexian Tower
1x Kessig Wolf Run

[tescrin]

Math guys / SE guys:

Can anyone provide a quick number crunch on how many creatures or pseudocreatures (lingering souls, combat walkers, fetchlands with dryad arbor) you would want to run in order to justify 2 Diabolic Intents, such that they are live ~90% of the time before turn 5 or so?

So I'd treat it like force of will. Obviously the more the better, but generally I think as low as 14 is "doable", while 17+ starts becoming reliable, and 21+ starts seeing significant diminishing returns, but who cares because you'll basically always have a target.

It's not quite the same since Force says "in my hand right now T1" but that's more restrictive than "on the battlefield at any point in the game while I have this in my hand and the mana to cast it."

It's not a bad way to sac him, though I believe Crop Rotation/PTower is the best sac'er (5 mana T2.) While Therapy is reasonable, it is a full turn slower. Intent is even more in that direction giving you a mere 2 mana open from Explorer. While you can enjoy T3's mana like anyone else, a T2 Sneakattack, or Sigarda, or GSZ x=4, etc will probably feel better


EDIT: Has anyone tried Infernal Plunge? That fills all the requirements for the sac card, while getting you to 6 mana T2. That happens to be the magic number for Titans and other goodies. The SneakAttack version could hit for lethal T2 with that mana as well.

[Navsi]

EDIT: Has anyone tried Infernal Plunge? That fills all the requirements for the sac card, while getting you to 6 mana T2. That happens to be the magic number for Titans and other goodies. The SneakAttack version could hit for lethal T2 with that mana as well.

Culling the Weak is where you want to be for that sort of thing. It's not particularly good, though:

- Awful topdeck
- Need both Plunge and Explorer in opener - Zenithing Explorer still puts us a turn behind, at which point it's hardly better than Therapy
- Need big payoff card in hand - three card combo is not easy to assemble (4 if we're going for Sneak - Fatty), especially without filtering
- Doesn't actually win us the game
- Phyrexian Tower does similar thing, repeatably, in a land slot
- Always a 2 for 0, if we use it to ritual out a threat and it gets Forced the opponent is still up in cards.

[tescrin]

stuff about Plunge being bad

Ah Culling! I thought I remembered a card like that but didn't have time to look it up.

These are all excellent points. Crop Rotation can enable anti-combo interaction, protect your manabase, and still get you to 5 mana, etc. and natural Tower is quite nice, while the cards that require you to sac to be effective have only a single use.

Thanks!

[Brael]

I love the idea of Crop Rotations, but apart from Bojuka Bog I don't own any worthy CR targets. And then there's the ever present question of in what available space to put them.

You don't? Phyrexian Tower is a pretty damn good CR target (probably the best one). Stronghold is good too. That's the great thing about CR, you don't need to go out of your way for it. Bog and the Two Towers are already enough on their own.

[Ganfar]

:-( true, i have been pondering on the PFire list, but it feels that the grind has been taken out of the grind. Currently i have been looking at a slightly different approach that is a bit more lands heavy.
Not all really new elements, rather just a mash-up from what was already there. Mostly i was looking for that synergy between Meren/Arbor/Tracker/Courser/Titania coupled with some ways to finish that game.
All in all i believe PFire lists NEED Liliana of the Veil to add some missing reach. Heres the list for reference (no board, since that's always fluid).
Also in here i was looking for Crop Rotation, but i couldn't find any more room...


1x Dryad Arbor
4x Veteran Explorer
1x Deathrite Shaman
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Eternal Witness
1x Tireless Tracker
1x Courser of Kruphix
1x Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1x Huntmaster of the Fells
1x Thrun, the Last Troll
1x Thragtusk
1x Titania, Protector of Argoth
1x Primeval Titan
4x Green Sun's Zenith
2x Sylvan Library
4x Cabal Therapy
3x Pernicious Deed
2x Abrupt Decay
3x Punishing Fire
3x Liliana of the Veil
1x Nissa, Vital Force
4x Verdant Catacombs
2x Wooded Foothills
1x Bloodstained Mire
3x Forest
2x Swamp
1x Mountain
2x Bayou
1x Taiga
1x Badlands
3x Grove of the Burnwillows
1x Volrath's Stronghold
1x Phyrexian Tower
1x Kessig Wolf Run


I have tried to play with Titania, Protector of Argoth in P.F Jund before. The biggest issue is that you have to little fetchlands. It was often Tiania comes in to play with no lands in the graveyard. Then I have a 5/3 for 5 vanlia. That was baaad. The list I played had 4 Grove of the Burnwillows and less fetchlands so it maybe can work.

I think Meren of Clan Nel Totn and Thrun, the Last Troll is better now when Terminus is gone. If BUG becomes pouplar then Meren of Clan Nel Totn will be really good. Thrun smash Delver decks with counter spells.

3 unitly lands is one too much. Either have Kessig Wolf Run or Volrath's Stronghold. I have been more impress with Kessig when I have play with it. Veteran Explorer becomes a threat with Wolf run!

I want one more Tracker and Huntmaster in main.

Other then that I like the list :)

[Brael]

I had been thinking about Nissa Vital Force for a while. She seems really powerful against control decks, but a bit weak against aggro. She puts a fast clock against combo decks too, but it's the same for any of our fat guys. I'm not 100% on it.

Without Terminus to deal with, I think Nissa, Vital Force gets a lot worse. I actually don't like her against combo because most combo decks have a bunch of basic lands, so I would rather not pop an Explorer against them, which means you can't cast Nissa in a timely fashion. She's great against control, but until a new control deck surfaces, I'm not really convinced she's needed. That was a big factor in my deciding to try out a SFM build right now.

[Barook]

Is there a reason why BUG lists don't seem to run Leovold? :confused:

At the very least, he seems like a great GSZ target.

[pettdan]

Is there a reason why BUG lists don't seem to run Leovold? :confused:

At the very least, he seems like a great GSZ target.

I checked back a few pages since I know at least I posted one. There are lists in posts 1155 and 1178 including Leovold.

[square_two]

Is there a reason why BUG lists don't seem to run Leovold? :confused:

At the very least, he seems like a great GSZ target.

I'm at 3 Trackers, 1 Leovold in my list. Leovold currently hasn't shined that much, but I'm only in my 2nd or so league with him.

Card is pretty expensive right now, might be a reason people are reluctant to try him.

[Brael]

Is there a reason why BUG lists don't seem to run Leovold? :confused:

At the very least, he seems like a great GSZ target.

I think there's a few reasons:
1. Leovold is kind of pricey right now, I know that's my reason for not picking him up.
2. The lands to run him are pretty pricey too. I've got a barebones set of duals for this right now, but many don't.
3. We don't actually need him. In a go big style build I like him, as a way to protect 4+ drops. But a lot of BUG lists have been following the SE approach of smaller curves, in which case Trackers just generate more value as your 3 drop. No one has managed to crack the blue puzzle yet. I think a lot of this has to do with FoW. Without FoW, the power of blue drops significantly. But Nic Fit already has Therapy+GSZ taking up all the spell slots that FoW could have. So even when going blue, you miss the most important part of the card. Then the rest of the blue plan has issues. Cantrips lower the lands in the deck, and for a deck that wants a lot of lands to Crop Rotation for, this actually hurts us.

I know I'm pretty negative on BUG in general (though I really do want to make it work), but the fundamental things blue do, seem to clash a lot.

[Brael]

I'm at 3 Trackers, 1 Leovold in my list. Leovold currently hasn't shined that much, but I'm only in my 2nd or so league with him.

Card is pretty expensive right now, might be a reason people are reluctant to try him.

Any thoughts on trying the 4 Tracker+Oboro plan?

[square_two]

Any thoughts on trying the 4 Tracker+Oboro plan?

I mean, it's cool I guess. I've been on 4 Trackers before and honestly I wouldn't think that the small hit in mana consistency with Oboro is really better than just having 9 fetches. Right now I'm at 21 lands with a single Stronghold and getting early land sequencing just perfect can be a struggle sometimes. Fetches are best with Tracker since you can guarantee two clues right off the bat. Plus I'm running 3 Brainstorm and 3 Jace, so shuffling is always good. Usually an unchecked Tracker over just a few turns of normal land drops is enough to pull you pretty far ahead.

[Echelon]

You don't? Phyrexian Tower is a pretty damn good CR target (probably the best one). Stronghold is good too. That's the great thing about CR, you don't need to go out of your way for it. Bog and the Two Towers are already enough on their own.

Interesting... I guess I have some thinking to do.

[from Cairo]

Also curious which matchup is the Treetop for?

I'm also curious.



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[tescrin]

Personally, I often ran a couple man lands with PTitan just because it made him more a GSZ-version of the Grave Titan.

[from Cairo]

Sure, but in that SE list Treetop Village a sb card in a shell w/o Primeval Titan, fetchable via Crop Rotation.


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[Brael]

I'm also curious.



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Anything attrition based.

[Warden]

I'm at 3 Trackers, 1 Leovold in my list. Leovold currently hasn't shined that much, but I'm only in my 2nd or so league with him.

Card is pretty expensive right now, might be a reason people are reluctant to try him.

I can't justify his paper price. He's a "maybe" card in the decks I run. I think Nic Fit just ramps bigger tbh.

[MrIggins]

Playing a charity tournament on Saturday with the following:

4 Veteran Explorer
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Eternal Witness
1 Fierce Empath
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1 Thragtusk
1 Inferno Titan
1 Woodland Bellower
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Toxic Deluge
3 Night's Whisper
2 Diabolic Intent
2 Lightning Bolt

2 Pernicious Deed
4 Sneak Attack

4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Dryad Arbor
3 Bayou
2 Taiga
2 Badlands
3 Forest
2 Swamp
2 Mountain
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Phyrexian Tower

sb::
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Lost Legacy
1 To the Slaughter
1 Red Elemental Blast
2 Blood Moon
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Pithing Needle
2 Engineered Plague
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Surgical Extraction

Haven't gotten to play as much lately so I don't have a ton of reps in but I feel fairly happy with this list. Impressions from my testing:
-Dryad Arbor is really good in this list. Better than in previous builds. Zenith for 0 is a turn 1 play that we have fewer of without Top, fetching into Therapy to resolve a Sneak is great, and it has great synergy with Intent.
-Intent is one of the higher-variance pieces of the list but I think 1 is needed, 2 remains to be seen but it helps tie the room together.
-Meren is a lot better now than she used to be.
-List is very much not final but it has legs and we're running with it.

[Bobmans]

I have tried to play with Titania, Protector of Argoth in P.F Jund before. The biggest issue is that you have to little fetchlands. It was often Tiania comes in to play with no lands in the graveyard. Then I have a 5/3 for 5 vanlia. That was baaad. The list I played had 4 Grove of the Burnwillows and less fetchlands so it maybe can work.

I think Meren of Clan Nel Totn and Thrun, the Last Troll is better now when Terminus is gone. If BUG becomes pouplar then Meren of Clan Nel Totn will be really good. Thrun smash Delver decks with counter spells.

3 unitly lands is one too much. Either have Kessig Wolf Run or Volrath's Stronghold. I have been more impress with Kessig when I have play with it. Veteran Explorer becomes a threat with Wolf run!

I want one more Tracker and Huntmaster in main.

Other then that I like the list :)

Following your comment, this is what we get:

1x Dryad Arbor
4x Veteran Explorer
1x Deathrite Shaman
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Eternal Witness
1x Courser of Kruphix
2x Tireless Tracker
2x Huntmaster of the Fells
1x Thrun, the Last Troll
1x Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1x Thragtusk
1x Primeval Titan
4x Green Sun's Zenith
2x Sylvan Library
4x Cabal Therapy
3x Pernicious Deed
2x Abrupt Decay
3x Punishing Fire
3x Liliana of the Veil
1x Nissa, Vital Force
4x Verdant Catacombs
2x Wooded Foothills
1x Bloodstained Mire
3x Forest
2x Swamp
1x Mountain
2x Bayou
1x Taiga
1x Badlands
1x Kessig Wolf Run
1x Phyrexian Tower
3x Grove of the Burnwillows

[Navsi]

Did some testing with new Nissa. She seems reasonable if you're playing a creature heavy build that can protect her. Made her for 3 on turn 4 and user her +0 each turn, slamming SFM - miss - miss - Tracker which seems fine considering I wasn't manipulating my topdeck at all. I think you want 40+ creatures and lands before she goes in, probably with JTMS to support her.

[Echelon]

Did some testing with new Nissa. She seems reasonable if you're playing a creature heavy build that can protect her. Made her for 3 on turn 4 and user her +0 each turn, slamming SFM - miss - miss - Tracker which seems fine considering I wasn't manipulating my topdeck at all. I think you want 40+ creatures and lands before she goes in, probably with JTMS to support her.

Her +2 (Scry 2) might be more valuable now we've lost Top. Nissa doesn't get killed by Deed, where Sylvan Library does. And when she's been on the field long enough (or, you know, after you've wiped the board with Deed) she can come in for a quick 10 damage.

[Navsi]

Her +2 (Scry 2) might be more valuable now we've lost Top. Nissa doesn't get killed by Deed, where Sylvan Library does. And when she's been on the field long enough (or, you know, after you've wiped the board with Deed) she can come in for a quick 10 damage.

Yeah. Her +2 is a bit awkward sometimes, though.

If you have more than 50% of your deck as 'hits' for Nissa (not unlikely), then alternating scry and 0 gets you less stuff into play than just 0'ing every time, even if you assume that the scry always guarantees you hit next turn - which is unlikely, since there will be cards you want to put on the bottom at least some of the time. If you already have enough board presence to force a sweeper from the opponent, I can see ticking her up to prepare to reapply pressure afterwards, or if she's on less than 3 counters, but otherwise it doesn't seem particularly powerful. I guess she can also ship away cards you brainstormed to the top of the library which is nice.

[Brael]

Yeah. Her +2 is a bit awkward sometimes, though.

If you have more than 50% of your deck as 'hits' for Nissa (not unlikely), then alternating scry and 0 gets you less stuff into play than just 0'ing every time, even if you assume that the scry always guarantees you hit next turn - which is unlikely, since there will be cards you want to put on the bottom at least some of the time. If you already have enough board presence to force a sweeper from the opponent, I can see ticking her up to prepare to reapply pressure afterwards, or if she's on less than 3 counters, but otherwise it doesn't seem particularly powerful. I guess she can also ship away cards you brainstormed to the top of the library which is nice.

The interactions with JTMS are really good. I can't seem to figure out the rest of the deck though.

[Navsi]

The interactions with JTMS are really good. I can't seem to figure out the rest of the deck though.

I'm playing her in 4c Atraxa.

4 Explorer
1 Ooze
1 QPM
3 Strix
2 Stoneforge
3 Tracker
1 Witness
1 Leovold
1 Meren
1 Atraxa
1 Sigarda

2 JTMS
2 Nissa SOE
1 Jitte
1 Sword of whatever (batterskull in sideboard)

4 Therapy
3 Zenith

2 Deed
2 Decay
2 Swords
2 Brutality

21 lands

[Bobmans]

I'm playing her in 4c Atraxa.

4 Explorer
1 Ooze
1 QPM
3 Strix
2 Stoneforge
3 Tracker
1 Witness
1 Leovold
1 Meren
1 Atraxa
1 Sigarda

2 JTMS
2 Nissa SOE
1 Jitte
1 Sword of whatever (batterskull in sideboard)

4 Therapy
3 Zenith

2 Deed
2 Decay
2 Swords
2 Brutality

21 lands

Don't you miss a Deathrite or w/e in this build, considering that you run only 4 vet as ramp, with 3 Zenith and pretty greedy on the Colors? (asuming there is an Arbor in the manabase?)
Other than that, the list looks very nice.

[Echelon]

Don't you miss a Deathrite or w/e in this build, considering that you run only 4 vet as ramp, with 3 Zenith and pretty greedy on the Colors? (asuming there is an Arbor in the manabase?)
Other than that, the list looks very nice.

Dude, Arbor isn't a part of the manabase. It can't be. It's just a creature.

@Navsi: You might want to add at least 1 DRS. Other than that, that's a nice and spicy list!

[Navsi]

@Navsi: You might want to add at least 1 DRS. Other than that, that's a nice and spicy list!

Yeah 1 Deathrite is probably a reasonable call, might move the QPM to the sideboard or cut a Tracker/strix

Arbor is indeed not in the deck. It's tempting (equipment / meren / fetchlands..) but I'd rather not spend a slot on a card I don't want to draw when I could be playing good creatures instead. It's not like Strix isn't also amazing with equipment and Meren, after all.

I'm not too worried about mana ramping - with UG Nissa, the only 5cmc spell in the deck is Sigarda, and there are only four 4cmc spells in the deck (Meren, Atraxa, two Jaces). Not drawing an Explorer leaves most of the deck still playable. The deck does more per turn with more mana (play + equip at once, zenith for big stuff) but staying on 3-4 mana for a turn or two isn't the end of the world. I think 7-8 ramp effects in the deck is probably enough.

[JackaBo]

Love that Atraxa list :)

Concerning nyxfit: I'm just a few cards from a complete maindeck now but still unsure about the haymakers.
What I may choose between (in terms of card availability) is Cruel reality, Sandwurm convergence, Living pane, Curse of deaths hold, Humility, Nether void, the Abyss, and Starfield of nyx. I would prefer to run as few haymakers as possible, but that depends all on the mana-cost. I am also open to having niche haymakers in sideboard. I guess I could buy a Dovescape if need be.

One idea is Convergens + Void since one of them should be good vs fair and the other vs unfair dekcs. Void as a follow up to Converegens should be seal the (already sealed?) deal. Nyx could be added as a way to recur deed and make sure that I dont just die to disenchant. With cabal therapy and brutality i should be able to bin a drawn Convergens and cheat it in with nyx as well. Not sure what the weaknesses of this set up is?

Another idea is curse, humility and possibly dovescape/living plane. They work toghether well and the hard lock is appealing. The cards have lower manacost and can be drawn and cast in the mid game. The downside is that you need more semi-expensive cards that may dilute your starting hand. You also kind of need two pieces to really lock the game down so the set-up to fight both fair and unfair decks is slower.

A less good idea, I guess, is Cruel Reality, more Deeds and possibly the Abyss for added creature hate or Void to fight combo.

A last idea is just running more Nyx and let Nyx win by itself. However that is weak to swords and sweepers.

How have you testing with wincon's worked out?

[square_two]

The interactions with JTMS are really good. I can't seem to figure out the rest of the deck though.

I've thought about adding the XGU Nissa into my BUG list but I'm not sure what to cut either.

Current list (or at least the next changes I plan to make)

3 Veteran Explorer
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Baleful Strix
3 Tireless Tracker
1 Leovold, Emissary of Trest
1 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1 Titania, Protector of Argoth

2 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Fatal Push
2 Collective Brutality
2 Abrupt Decay
3 Pernicious Deed

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Nissa, Vital Force

21 lands - 6 basics, 9 fetches, 1 Volrath's Stronghold

Recent changes would be -1 Vet + 1 GSZ for added flexibility. I'm a tad unsure of this but I've seen Stryfo/Clashed run 3 Vets with 0 GSZ in his BUG lists so it is probably doable. -1 Push for +1 Decay since I simply feel a bit weak to Chalice right now and Push is a miss against several decks.

So far Meren seems much more powerful than Titania. Titania just not doing much lately. I do like the idea of more walkers though. Part of me really wants to try Oath of Nissa plus way more walkers (cutting down to Vet + Strix + Meren to hold the fort). I don't think I can run either Liliana without Oath - the manabase is greedy as it is.

Might just try -Titania +Nissa SE.

[Navsi]

Love that Atraxa list :)

Concerning nyxfit

Cruel Reality and Sandwurm Convergence both beat fair midrange matchups, planeswalker and decks that cheat in big fatties. Each does so slightly differently, but you probably want one of these two.

Dovescape and Nether Void are our only interaction with spell based combo. We probably want one of these two. Dovescape works well with Sandwurm Convergence.

Curse of Death's Hold beats misc other decks, but overlaps a lot with Pernicious Deed. However it combos well with Dovescape.

Starfield gives us redundancy and locks out decks that rely on non-planeswalker permanents.

Humility is good against the same things as Cruel Reality and Sandwurm Convergence, but is closer to a hardlock, particularly with Curse of Death's Hold. However we can't run it and drop Cruel / Sandwurm because that leaves us with zero answers to planeswalkers.

Living Plane is a hardlock with Curse of Death's Hold (or Humility, sometimes) but complete garbage on its own.

----

I'm running Sandwurm / Dovescape / Curse / Starfield main, with Humility in the sideboard. Curse or Starfield could potentially get dropped, but I like having recursion in case Sandwurm gets killed or something leaving me with no real finishers, and Curse combos so well with Dovescape and Humility.

[square_two]

I'm running Sandwurm / Dovescape / Curse / Starfield main, with Humility in the sideboard. Curse or Starfield could potentially get dropped, but I like having recursion in case Sandwurm gets killed or something leaving me with no real finishers, and Curse combos so well with Dovescape and Humility.

+1 all these thoughts.

I'll add that Dovescape works very well with the Evo Leap engine as well. Leaping the first Rector for Dovescape is a great line.

My latest was with Sandwurm / Dovescape / Curse. Was close to adding Humility main - it seems that Sneak/Show has 1st or 2nd highest meta share right now so it's a good call.

You really don't want more than 4, or 5 if you have a couple costing under 5/6cmc. Once you decide on those, then focus quite a bit on interaction and consistency imo.

[Uyan]

What do people think of Saskia, the Unyielding as a GSZ-able target? She's bolt-proof and decay proof, has haste, and presents a rather quick clock with the likes of Nissa, Vital Force, Sigarda and - more importantly - T3 Tireless Tracker into T4 fetchland and crack two clues into T5 GSz for Saskia.

[Navsi]

What do people think of Saskia, the Unyielding as a GSZ-able target? She's bolt-proof and decay proof, has haste, and presents a rather quick clock with the likes of Nissa, Vital Force, Sigarda and - more importantly - T3 Tireless Tracker into T4 fetchland and crack two clues into T5 GSz for Saskia.

In what build? If you're splashing a fourth colour in Abzan, there are a lot more reasons to go blue than red.

[Uyan]

In what build? If you're splashing a fourth colour in Abzan, there are a lot more reasons to go blue than red.

I was thinking not to splash for it, or just a Taiga, and it would be for Abzan.
After reading through some comments I can definitely see the appeal of Blue, I just thought "How good would Saskia be if you didn't splash for it?"

[Bobmans]

I was thinking not to splash for it, or just a Taiga, and it would be for Abzan.
After reading through some comments I can definitely see the appeal of Blue, I just thought "How good would Saskia be if you didn't splash for it?"
I dunno, I think that Saskia is a win-more. Meaning that if your able to connect with it, you probably control the board anyway. I like the idea of splashing red in Junk lists, but it does not really add anything other then style points. The reason to play red is PFire+Liliana OR Sneak Attack OR Nahiri, the Harbringer OR Scapeshift. I could only see Nahiri being something able to splash in Junk. The other decks are already consuming so much dedicated slots that it would make the list weaker before stronger.

[Yutao]

Saskia is a haste creature to snipe JTMS though.

[tescrin]

Nissa has a couple other oddities to her:

Cons:
* Killed by Flickerwisp
* Teeg blocks her
* requires 4 mana if you want her out of bolt-range and play it safe.
* Her best CA ability is not guaranteed or takes set up; contrasting to other walkers' guaranteed CA, usually the turn you drop them
* +2 abilities are always strong, if nothing else for the fact that it makes the walker pretty tough to get rid of.

Pros:
* 8+ mana makes her almost a 10-damage sorcery
* 3 mana to drop her makes her a better version of the best Scry-1 Enchantments we've seen
* Her CA, when successful, is also tempo/mana savings; which makes it a 2 or 3-in-1 ability. Unlike just giving you the card, the ability to come down and give you a dude is pretty nifty.

I think Kaya is reasonable if you're looking for straight CA. Dropping her and doing a -2 not only works for +2 CA instantly, but she can *do it again* before requiring any setup. Not to mention a non-targeted win-con.

Nissa seems fine for pitching to force and being versatile, but she's also only explosive if you've basically already won the game. I'm waiting a bit before I get any copies.

[Ganfar]

Following your comment, this is what we get:

1x Dryad Arbor
4x Veteran Explorer
1x Deathrite Shaman
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Eternal Witness
1x Courser of Kruphix
2x Tireless Tracker
2x Huntmaster of the Fells
1x Thrun, the Last Troll
1x Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1x Thragtusk
1x Primeval Titan
4x Green Sun's Zenith
2x Sylvan Library
4x Cabal Therapy
3x Pernicious Deed
2x Abrupt Decay
3x Punishing Fire
3x Liliana of the Veil
1x Nissa, Vital Force
4x Verdant Catacombs
2x Wooded Foothills
1x Bloodstained Mire
3x Forest
2x Swamp
1x Mountain
2x Bayou
1x Taiga
1x Badlands
1x Kessig Wolf Run
1x Phyrexian Tower
3x Grove of the Burnwillows


This looks cool. I would like to play with Titania but you can't get everything.

Chandra, ToD was really nice when I played her. 2 red in mana cost maybe too much in this deck.

I hope I will beable to play it soon

[Bobmans]

This looks cool. I would like to play with Titania but you can't get everything.

Chandra, ToD was really nice when I played her. 2 red in mana cost maybe too much in this deck.

I hope I will beable to play it soon
Cool, Chandra is defenitly going to SB for the grindy MU's. RR is pretty hard tho without 2 basic Mountains. Learned that the hard way with Stormbreath Dragon (which is still one of my favorite configurations.

On Saskia, I wouldnt waste a slot and a Taiga just for a random Jace snipe. Sigarda, Rhino, Tusk and Titan already makes Jace awkward. Not to mention Nissa, Vital Force or other combat walkers like Garruk Relentless.

Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-G935F met Tapatalk

[Yutao]

What do you guys think of Ajani, Unyielding in a Junk Fit deck? Is 6 CMC Sorin just better?

[LVA]

What do you guys think of Ajani, Unyielding in a Junk Fit deck? Is 6 CMC Sorin just better?

6 Cmc is a lot, even in a deck that can ramp like this. There are simply better options at 4 mana that you can realistically cast without having to pop a veteran explorer.

[Yutao]

You're not wrong. 4 cmc walkers feel relatively anemic, especially with Miracles out of the format. Kaya's probably the best for Junk, but I'm gonna do some testing with 5-6 cmc walkers to see if they have more of an impact.

[MrIggins]

I think I'd rather play Sorin, Grim Nemesis over 6-mana Ajani and that both are probably just too low impact for costing 6 mana.

[Yutao]

Maybe it's time to do something ridiculous and play some form of junk super friends list with hymn?

[Bobmans]

For a walker to be of any use, it should be able to generate some kind of advantage, protect itself and be able to win the game on its own. The higher the cmc, the more impact all should have.
Ajani Unyeilding does generate conditional advantage, protect itself thru spot removal, but lacks a wincon on its own. While a card like Nissa, VF or Garruk R or Kaya provide all those for less mana. Take Ugin for example, it has it all, but you gotta pay big. Liliana of the Veil is a bit of an oddball here, but she has it all as well if you look at it, and granted, that she only cost 3 mana. Plus Liliana is the least crappy walker vs combo.

Tbh, if they made Ajani Unyeilding cost less or gave it a better ulti I'd actually played it.

Edit: off all Colors, Junk has the least interesting walkers for Superfiends. Unless Maybe New Gideon and some old Gideon can make you invincible.
BUG probably is still the better one with Jace and now maybe Nissa GU. Then I'd say R, since it can play PFire with Liliana, Chandra ToD and some more. Chandra Flamecaller is awesome as well, but now that Miracles is gone it is to slow. And last there is Eldrazi Fit that runs Cloudpost, which is able to support Ugin and Karn.

[Secretly.A.Bee]

EldraziFit. What fresh hell is that?!? List?

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

[square_two]

Edit: off all Colors, Junk has the least interesting walkers for Superfiends. Unless Maybe New Gideon and some old Gideon can make you invincible.
BUG probably is still the better one with Jace and now maybe Nissa GU. Then I'd say R, since it can play PFire with Liliana, Chandra ToD and some more. Chandra Flamecaller is awesome as well, but now that Miracles is gone it is to slow. And last there is Eldrazi Fit that runs Cloudpost, which is able to support Ugin and Karn.

Yep, I feel like any walker list without Jace is just missing the point lol.

I can't tell how this looks. Very similar to one of the lists in the previous summer's Mediocre Legacy League.

4 Veteran Explorer
2 Deathrite Shaman

4 Brainstorm
4 Oath of Nissa
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Swords to Plowshares
2 Innocent Blood
2 Collective Brutality
3 Pernicious Deed
1 Damnation

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
2 Nissa, Vital Force
1 Ob Nixilis, Reignited
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion

2 Forest
2 Island
2 Plains
1 Swamp
2 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
1 Savannah
1 Scrubland
1 Tundra
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta

Could also do -2 DRS, +1 GSZ as Vet Insurance, +1...Narset?

[Bobmans]

EldraziFit. What fresh hell is that?!? List?

You must have seen it somewhere along the way, the build sort off fallen out of favor due to Sneak Fit coming along. Kevin was investing some work in the colorless splash: BG<>. There is a list in the primer somewhere. The deck has it's own thread (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?28391-Primer-Nic-Feat-8Post&p=826002&viewfull=1#post826002).
I was also toying around with the list on some level, obviously the ? was Top. I really, REALLY like to play something like this and make it more competitive. I have always like NicFit core strategy and this lists endgame is so mega sweet. Anything that gets away with playing Ugin and Karn is something on the radar for me. Tho not really sure if this isn't just another flavor of NicFit, maybe it is slower then other variants, maybe it is weaker to Wasteland.

4x Veteran Explorer
1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Eternal Witness
1x Courser of Kruphix
1x Tireless Tracker
1x Oracle of Mul Daya
1x Thragtusk
1x Primeval Titan
3x Thought-Knot Seer
1x Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
1x Emrakul, the Promised End
4x Green Sun's Zenith
3x ?
4x Cabal Therapy
3x Pernicious Deed
2x Abrupt Decay
1x Toxic Deluge
1x Nissa, Vital Force
1x Karn Liberated
1x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
1x Eye of Ugin
1x Phyrexian Tower
4x Glimmerpost
2x Cloudpost
2x Llanowar Wastes
2x Bayou
3x Forest
2x Swamp
2x Wastes
4x Verdant Catacombs

[Ganfar]

Cool, Chandra is defenitly going to SB for the grindy MU's. RR is pretty hard tho without 2 basic Mountains. Learned that the hard way with Stormbreath Dragon (which is still one of my favorite configurations.
)

Agree with the Mountains. This list is less red overall and have lot of double green and black cards in the deck.

To make Strombreath to a monster was sooo sweet. It has been less legacy lastly but I want to play more on the Strombreath build.

[Bobmans]

Agree with the Mountains. This list is less red overall and have lot of double green and black cards in the deck.

To make Strombreath to a monster was sooo sweet. It has been less legacy lastly but I want to play more on the Strombreath build.

Stormbreath Dragon puts up a middle finger to most removal in the format. On top of that, you should see peoples face when you slam it to the table. Not sure which would be the better call atm, Currently jamming several versions and can't make up my mind what to stay on. SneakFit, EldraziFit, PFire (G or RR), Junk (Rhino, Value or SFM), system overload... lol
The sig list is updated BTW to match the RR version.

[sdematt]

Stormbreath Dragon puts up a middle finger to most removal in the format. On top of that, you should see peoples face when you slam it to the table. Not sure which would be the better call atm, Currently jamming several versions and can't make up my mind what to stay on. SneakFit, EldraziFit, PFire (G or RR), Junk (Rhino, Value or SFM), system overload... lol
The sig list is updated BTW to match the RR version.

Agreed, I have a few different versions of this deck proxied up (two in real, idk how many in sharpie). It's a madhouse, or so they claim.

[sdematt]

Anyone faced any of these Bant decks yet? I'm pretty sure they're just stone cold to Deed like Esperblade and such. Leovold seems like the only wrench, and maybe TNN. Deluge seems fine.

[Ganfar]

Anyone faced any of these Bant decks yet? I'm pretty sure they're just stone cold to Deed like Esperblade and such. Leovold seems like the only wrench, and maybe TNN. Deluge seems fine.

You mean Reid Bant?

[LVA]

Anyone faced any of these Bant decks yet? I'm pretty sure they're just stone cold to Deed like Esperblade and such. Leovold seems like the only wrench, and maybe TNN. Deluge seems fine.

Only trouble I've had is if I don't save a therapy for right after they SFM to snag batterskull. With Junk rhino can just trample over TNN and leovold usually gets swept up with everything else when you deed. We can destroy all their equipment pretty easily, and without those our creatures destroy theirs in combat. Overall seems pretty favorable for us.

[Echelon]

Only trouble I've had is if I don't save a therapy for right after they SFM to snag batterskull. With Junk rhino can just trample over TNN and leovold usually gets swept up with everything else when you deed. We can destroy all their equipment pretty easily, and without those our creatures destroy theirs in combat. Overall seems pretty favorable for us.

Try running a QPM in your main 60 :wink:. They seldom see that one coming (just make sure they out of bounce-mana before going for it, though).

[Navsi]

Against blue/x midrange decks I've always seen TNN and JTMS as the only two cards we really care about, except Deathrite if we're on <10 life.

[Memories of the Time]

+1 all these thoughts.

I'll add that Dovescape works very well with the Evo Leap engine as well. Leaping the first Rector for Dovescape is a great line.

My latest was with Sandwurm / Dovescape / Curse. Was close to adding Humility main - it seems that Sneak/Show has 1st or 2nd highest meta share right now so it's a good call.

You really don't want more than 4, or 5 if you have a couple costing under 5/6cmc. Once you decide on those, then focus quite a bit on interaction and consistency imo.

As said before, i'm 100% sure about Humility maindeck. A single card resolves a huge slice of meta by itself, first point, and a slice that we can't fight with other ench (maindeck at least).
This Sunday i'm going to a "large" tournament in Italy with Nyx, let's hope =) I'll Play Convergence, Nyx, Cast Out, Humility and Dovescape.

[Warden]

Anyone faced any of these Bant decks yet? I'm pretty sure they're just stone cold to Deed like Esperblade and such. Leovold seems like the only wrench, and maybe TNN. Deluge seems fine.

Deluge and Deed do the heavy lifting. Double TNN can be problematic though (seeing 1 after a board wipe or a fast 2x TNN in opening 3 turns). I'd hedge my bets by having board wipes. Junk can run Rhino, which actually does a number against them. I'm still on the fence about using planeswalkers to fight the deck though. TNN means they eliminate nearly any walker in 1-2 hits. But then that's 1-2 extra turns of value and not taking damage yourself. Liliana of the Veil is surprisingly strong here if you consider her an edict with upside.

[Echelon]

If the number of TNN is going up and Elves! is becoming more common, Golgari Charm (or Zealous Persecution) might be a nice SB card again.

[Yutao]

If the number of TNN is going up and Elves! is becoming more common, Golgari Charm (or Zealous Persecution) might be a nice SB card again.

I've been running a singleton of Golgari Charm in the board and loving it. All three modes are mad useful.

[tescrin]

I've been running a singleton of Golgari Charm in the board and loving it. All three modes are mad useful.

I remember popping a pernicious deed on someone who then brandished a Golgari Charm.
It was a sad day for me.

[JackaBo]

I did some testing versus delver.deck yesterday. My configuration was Convergence, Void and Nyx. Landdrops is important so I upped lands to 22/60
Reflections: Stifle is a bitch. There's a bit too many do-nothing cards like evolution on a empty board. How are your feelings on dryad arbor in this list?
Generally i felt like i defend with interaction spells and gets hellbent pretty fast. I wonder if liliana (as additional threat) and infernal turor (to speed up drawing wincons after you've survived the initial onslaught) is viable?
Deed was great as expected pre board.

[Navsi]

I did some testing versus delver.deck yesterday. My configuration was Convergence, Void and Nyx. Landdrops is important so I upped lands to 22/60
Reflections: Stifle is a bitch. There's a bit too many do-nothing cards like evolution on a empty board. How are your feelings on dryad arbor in this list?
Generally i felt like i defend with interaction spells and gets hellbent pretty fast. I wonder if liliana (as additional threat) and infernal turor (to speed up drawing wincons after you've survived the initial onslaught) is viable?
Deed was great as expected pre board.

How many Lingering Souls were you playing?

[Paranoid__Android]

Another local legacy is coming up next weekend, and with new metagame change and SDTop ban, I'm planning to play Rhino Fit again, but with Top ban, I can't decide what to play in their slot. Sylvan Library, Painful Truths,...? And since I can tell that metagame will be filled with small creatures like Infect ones, Snapcasters, Pyromancers, Elves, Death and Taxes (without full manabase), affinity and combo decks like dredge and Storm, should I mainboard a Night of Souls' Betrayal for a ''secret tech'' and maybe Diabolic Intent for tutoring it up?

[Navsi]

Another local legacy is coming up next weekend, and with new metagame change and SDTop ban, I'm planning to play Rhino Fit again, but with Top ban, I can't decide what to play in their slot. Sylvan Library, Painful Truths,...? And since I can tell that metagame will be filled with small creatures like Infect ones, Snapcasters, Pyromancers, Elves, Death and Taxes (without full manabase), affinity and combo decks like dredge and Storm, should I mainboard a Night of Souls' Betrayal for a ''secret tech'' and maybe Diabolic Intent for tutoring it up?

NoSB seems pretty deep. If you want to punish one-toughness guys super hard, play a maindeck Jitte or something.

[JackaBo]

How many Lingering Souls were you playing?

3 and they were all-stars!
But the variance with no filtering at all...

[Navsi]

3 and they were all-stars!
But the variance with no filtering at all...

Yeah it's clunky. I think - especially if you're playing Starfield - a copy of two of Vessel of Nascency would help.

[Brael]

Another local legacy is coming up next weekend, and with new metagame change and SDTop ban, I'm planning to play Rhino Fit again, but with Top ban, I can't decide what to play in their slot. Sylvan Library, Painful Truths,...? And since I can tell that metagame will be filled with small creatures like Infect ones, Snapcasters, Pyromancers, Elves, Death and Taxes (without full manabase), affinity and combo decks like dredge and Storm, should I mainboard a Night of Souls' Betrayal for a ''secret tech'' and maybe Diabolic Intent for tutoring it up?

Try my Rhino build from a few pages ago, it should crush that metagame (Elves will be tough though).

[Brael]

And for a double post. From the metagame thread, this should influence what we want to play I think in a general meta.

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?31585-The-new-Legacy-metagame&p=1007580&viewfull=1#post1007580

[Ivan-784]

Another local legacy is coming up next weekend, and with new metagame change and SDTop ban, I'm planning to play Rhino Fit again, but with Top ban, I can't decide what to play in their slot. Sylvan Library, Painful Truths,...? And since I can tell that metagame will be filled with small creatures like Infect ones, Snapcasters, Pyromancers, Elves, Death and Taxes (without full manabase), affinity and combo decks like dredge and Storm, should I mainboard a Night of Souls' Betrayal for a ''secret tech'' and maybe Diabolic Intent for tutoring it up?

I'd change the 3 tops with 1 Sylvan Library, 1 tutor (diabolic intent or crop rotation) and 1 broken card (I chose to run 1 Recurring Nightmare in this slot, but it could be a combat planeswalker or one extra Tireless Tracker too). You can find my big junk list some pages before as well :)



And for a double post. From the metagame thread, this should influence what we want to play I think in a general meta.

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?31585-The-new-Legacy-metagame&p=1007580&viewfull=1#post1007580

This makes me feel almost like I have to call for "Stifle" when I go for a blind Therapy :laugh:

[Bobmans]

Another local legacy is coming up next weekend, and with new metagame change and SDTop ban, I'm planning to play Rhino Fit again, but with Top ban, I can't decide what to play in their slot. Sylvan Library, Painful Truths,...? And since I can tell that metagame will be filled with small creatures like Infect ones, Snapcasters, Pyromancers, Elves, Death and Taxes (without full manabase), affinity and combo decks like dredge and Storm, should I mainboard a Night of Souls' Betrayal for a ''secret tech'' and maybe Diabolic Intent for tutoring it up?

*kuch* PFire *kuch*.
BUT seriously after testing i found Painful Truths to be better then Sylvan Library. I'd probably play a 1/2 split at this point. I am not a fan of Diabolic Intent in a non combo list.
Also i like having Siege Rhino, but lately i was never impressed by multiples.
Ivans list played nice and felt very robuust, and like he said before, it topdecks very good to.

[Ivan-784]

*kuch* PFire *kuch*.
BUT seriously after testing i found Painful Truths to be better then Sylvan Library. I'd probably play a 1/2 split at this point. I am not a fan of Diabolic Intent in a non combo list.
Also i like having Siege Rhino, but lately i was never impressed by multiples.
Ivans list played nice and felt very robuust, and like he said before, it topdecks very good to.

On Diabolic Intent: I agree with you, Intent suits better in a combo deck. In fact, I included it as a "Get my sideboard!" card (plus obviously, as a sac outlet), but I am persuading myself that I don't really need this effect, and by reading posts here I'm starting to think that Crop rotation could be a better choice.

I agree also on Rhino: I couldn't play without this guy in my junk list, but playing more than a copy seems to me like a lost chance to include something nastier or some hatebear guys. I could consider a second copy only if I'd cut some other lifegain (aka Courser), but I don't want to do that :)

On may 21 I have another big event, so I'm going to test the new cards! I just hope that the Origins Nissa will be delivered in time :rolleyes:

[Yutao]

On Diabolic Intent: I agree with you, Intent suits better in a combo deck. In fact, I included it as a "Get my sideboard!" card (plus obviously, as a sac outlet), but I am persuading myself that I don't really need this effect, and by reading posts here I'm starting to think that Crop rotation could be a better choice.

I agree also on Rhino: I couldn't play without this guy in my junk list, but playing more than a copy seems to me like a lost chance to include something nastier or some hatebear guys. I could consider a second copy only if I'd cut some other lifegain (aka Courser), but I don't want to do that :)

On may 21 I have another big event, so I'm going to test the new cards! I just hope that the Origins Nissa will be delivered in time :rolleyes:

Origins Nissa has personally been insane for me, even with the conflict of two Nissa's in the main.

[Bobmans]

On Diabolic Intent: I agree with you, Intent suits better in a combo deck. In fact, I included it as a "Get my sideboard!" card (plus obviously, as a sac outlet), but I am persuading myself that I don't really need this effect, and by reading posts here I'm starting to think that Crop rotation could be a better choice.

I agree also on Rhino: I couldn't play without this guy in my junk list, but playing more than a copy seems to me like a lost chance to include something nastier or some hatebear guys. I could consider a second copy only if I'd cut some other lifegain (aka Courser), but I don't want to do that :)

On may 21 I have another big event, so I'm going to test the new cards! I just hope that the Origins Nissa will be delivered in time :rolleyes:


Origins Nissa has personally been insane for me, even with the conflict of two Nissa's in the main.

I took your list and jammed a number games. Never saw Grave Titan.... I think i want all my creatures to be Zenithable.
Also tried Evolutionary Leap as a one-off. Not really sure what to make of it. I really had to work to get advantage out of it. It makes removal really awkward, but i do not like that it is not really a pro-active card unless you have Veteran Explorer or Meren next to it.

Nissa, Vastwood Seer, Nissa, Sage Animist is pretty sweet card. Playing it, you do have to make sure you leave one forest in the deck when popping Dora's. At the time you want to play it, make sure you hold your land drop and have at least 6 lands in play. That way you can take immediate advantage. Good to read it was no real problem when run next to Nissa, Vital Force

How has the Recurring Nightmare been working out?

[Ivan-784]

I took your list and jammed a number games. Never saw Grave Titan.... I think i want all my creatures to be Zenithable.
Also tried Evolutionary Leap as a one-off. Not really sure what to make of it. I really had to work to get advantage out of it. It makes removal really awkward, but i do not like that it is not really a pro-active card unless you have Veteran Explorer or Meren next to it.

Nissa, Vastwood Seer is pretty sweet card. Playing it, you do have to make sure you leave one forest in the deck when popping Dora's. At the time you want to play it, make sure you hold your land drop and have at least 6 lands in play. That way you can take immediate advantage. Good to read it was no real problem when run next to Nissa, Vital Force

How has the Recurring Nightmare been working out?

I was tempted to play the Evo Leap, but in the end I gave up. It is indeed a strong card advantage engine and helps us to have always a creature on the board. If I played Junk fit in the Miracle meta, I would certainly have included at least 1 evo leap MD or SB, but it is truly too slow in the current meta.

Recurring Nightmare is a real surprise for most players. You can do insane tricks like:
- sac thrag, put a beast, reanimate the same thrag and gain 5.
- play rhino, sac rhino and reanimate rhino (Did this against Burn last event :laugh:)
- sac ramp critters to reanimate fatties or themselves
- sac a token from grave titan to reanimate something scary
- therapy yourself for a fattie and then reanimate it and so on
It's an all star card against most decks. Helped me a lot against Burn and Show&Tell (I had Ashen Rider in the grave). But there are also some cons:

- you have to kill every single enemy DRS to make it effective.
- You often side it out in g2 due to grave hate, in particular if you are against Taxes and other decks that run RIP. But against decks like ANT or S&T is an auto include card.

Grave Titan is a shy guy. But when it comes down...:eek:

[Bobmans]

I was tempted to play the Evo Leap, but in the end I gave up. It is indeed a strong card advantage engine and helps us to have always a creature on the board. If I played Junk fit in the Miracle meta, I would certainly have included at least 1 evo leap MD, but it is truly too slow in the current meta.

Recurring Nightmare is a real surprise for most players. You can do insane tricks like:
- sac thrag, put a beast, reanimate the same thrag and gain 5.
- play rhino, sac rhino and reanimate rhino (Did this against Burn last event :laugh:)
- sac ramp critters to reanimate fatties or themselves
- sac a token from grave titan to reanimate something scary
- therapy yourself for a fattie and then reanimate it and so on
It's an all star card against most decks. Helped me a lot against Burn and Show&Tell (I had Ashen Rider in the grave). But there are also some cons:

- you have to kill every single enemy DRS to make it effective.
- You often side it out in g2 due to grave hate, in particular if you are against Taxes and other decks that run RIP. But against decks like ANT or S&T is an auto include card.

As far as i know you can't recur the same creature with Recurry, you have to announce the targets before you pay the cost.

So Evo gets to boot. Currently i am looking at the pile below. Still considering:
Recurring Nightmare,
Vindicate or Maelstrom Pulse for some added reach. I prefer Vindicate because it can get rid of Maze of Ith to force damage thru. Pulse seems marginally better tho.
Another green CMC 5/6 drop. Being on the high curve is pretty nice.
Maindeck Gaddock Teeg, sniping game 1 on decks like Sneak Attack or Storm is pretty nice. I guess this would be a meta call, before anything.



4x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Sylvan Library
2x Painful Truths
1x Nissa, Vital Force

4x Cabal Therapy
3x Pernicious Deed
2x Abrupt Decay
3x Path to Exile

1x Dryad Arbor
4x Veteran Explorer
1x Deathrite Shaman
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Qasali Pridemage
1x Eternal Witness
1x Tireless Tracker
1x Courser of Kruphix
1x Nissa, Vastwood Seer
1x Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1x Siege Rhino
1x Thragtusk
1x Sigarda, Host of Herons
1x Primeval Titan
1x Dragonlord Dromoka

4x Verdant Catacombs
3x Windswept Heath
3x Forest
2x Swamp
2x Plains
1x Scrubland
2x Savannah
2x Bayou
1x Volrath's Stronghold
1x Phyrexian Tower
1x Karakas

[Brael]

I'd change the 3 tops with 1 Sylvan Library, 1 tutor (diabolic intent or crop rotation) and 1 broken card (I chose to run 1 Recurring Nightmare in this slot, but it could be a combat planeswalker or one extra Tireless Tracker too). You can find my big junk list some pages before as well :)




This makes me feel almost like I have to call for "Stifle" when I go for a blind Therapy :laugh:

It makes me want to play Rhinos, even though I just put together a SFM list that I'm liking.

[Ivan-784]

As far as i know you can't recur the same creature with Recurry, you have to announce the targets before you pay the cost.

So Evo gets to boot. Currently i am looking at the pile below. Still considering:
Recurring Nightmare,
Vindicate or Maelstrom Pulse for some added reach. I prefer Vindicate because it can get rid of Maze of Ith to force damage thru. Pulse seems marginally better tho.
Another green CMC 5/6 drop. Being on the high curve is pretty nice.
Maindeck Gaddock Teeg, sniping game 1 on decks like Sneak Attack or Storm is pretty nice. I guess this would be a meta call, before anything.



4x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Sylvan Library
2x Painful Truths
1x Nissa, Vital Force

4x Cabal Therapy
3x Pernicious Deed
2x Abrupt Decay
3x Path to Exile

1x Dryad Arbor
4x Veteran Explorer
1x Deathrite Shaman
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Qasali Pridemage
1x Eternal Witness
1x Tireless Tracker
1x Courser of Kruphix
1x Nissa, Vastwood Seer
1x Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1x Siege Rhino
1x Thragtusk
1x Sigarda, Host of Herons
1x Primeval Titan
1x Dragonlord Dromoka

4x Verdant Catacombs
3x Windswept Heath
3x Forest
2x Swamp
2x Plains
1x Scrubland
2x Savannah
2x Bayou
1x Volrath's Stronghold
1x Phyrexian Tower
1x Karakas


I checked Rec Nightmare and you're right. But still, it's a powerful card: we have lots of creatures with ETB effect, and with six mana you can do nice things.

I'd prefer Vindicate over Pulse too: you can get rid also of other annoying lands: inkmoth nexus, dark depths/thespian stage...

On the high curve: yes, that's cool. But if you go bigger, don't forget to add at least one land.
edit: I noticed just now that you play Dryad arbor, NVM ;)

How do you get value from Meren in this shell? I mean, in early game it seems quite a dead card or am I wrong?

[Bobmans]

It makes me want to play Rhinos, even though I just put together a SFM list that I'm liking.

The meta looks good for any version of NicFit, but the things to take into consideration imo are:
Storm (ToA, EtW),
Sneak Attack,
Show and Tell,
Omniscience,
Progenitos,
Eldrazi swarm,
Elves swarm

Maindeck Gaddock Teeg is probably the right call, so is MD Qasali Pridemage. i am not sure if i actually want Scavenging Ooze in the MD here.
Not seeing enough lands to, but i have some concern over Eldrazi swarm, so Maelstrom Pulse is the better call over Vindicate here. Elves swarm are also present, but between the removal we already run and Ethersworn Canonist (which also is fine vs Storm), i don't feel we need more. Progenitus is most scary, so far i can only see running Council's Judgment and Containment Priest. Both also work against SnS in some way. Omniscience is probably the hardest to beat. Outside of Lost Legacy and some solid Discard/Extraction game i don't see another option. Krosan Grip maybe? Which also decend against Equipment and Sneak obviously.

Looking at Jund, i would probably take 3 Slaughter Games and 2 Red Elemental Blast, on top of the regular removal there only remains Eldrazi is an "unsolved" (as far as solved goes here, cus those SnS/Storm/Elves MU's are a bitch). Damnation is the go-to card for me.


I checked Rec Nightmare and you're right. But still, it's a powerful card: we have lots of creatures with ETB effect, and with six mana you can do nice things.

I'd prefer Vindicate over Pulse too: you can get rid also of other annoying lands: inkmoth nexus, dark depths/thespian stage...

On the high curve: yes, that's cool. But if you go bigger, don't forget to add at least one land.
edit: I noticed just now that you play Dryad arbor, NVM ;)

How do you get value from Meren in this shell? I mean, in early game it seems quite a dead card or am I wrong?

Yeah, well, at worst you'll be returning Veteran Explorer, which will help you ramp further. On the other hand we have Dryad Arbor which is returned to play right away. With Meren in the list i go for T1 GSZ @ 0 more often, if i don't have Therapy or Veteran Explorer. In that case, Meren becomes better early. All in all, with Arbor/Vet/DRS/GSZ ramping is a lot easier. If i go with GSZ 0 on T1, then i often lead with a dual land to make Wasteland little bit awkward. The benefit against Recurring Nightmare is that you do not need 2 creatures to be around and it doesn't cost extra mana, the con is offcourse that you have to wait for a turn to play the creature unless you have the experience counters.

[Ivan-784]

The meta looks good for any version of NicFit, but the things to take into consideration imo are:
Storm (ToA, EtW),
Sneak Attack,
Show and Tell,
Omniscience,
Progenitos,
Eldrazi swarm,
Elves swarm

Maindeck Gaddock Teeg is probably the right call, so is MD Qasali Pridemage. i am not sure if i actually want Scavenging Ooze in the MD here.
Not seeing enough lands to, but i have some concern over Eldrazi swarm, so Maelstrom Pulse is the better call over Vindicate here. Elves swarm are also present, but between the removal we already run and Ethersworn Canonist (which also is fine vs Storm), i don't feel we need more. Progenitus is most scary, so far i can only see running Council's Judgment and Containment Priest. Both also work against SnS in some way. Omniscience is probably the hardest to beat. Outside of Lost Legacy and some solid Discard/Extraction game i don't see another option. Krosan Grip maybe? Which also decend against Equipment and Sneak obviously.

Looking at Jund, i would probably take 3 Slaughter Games and 2 Red Elemental Blast, on top of the regular removal there only remains Eldrazi is an "unsolved" (as far as solved goes here, cus those SnS/Storm/Elves MU's are a bitch). Damnation is the go-to card for me.



Yeah, well, at worst you'll be returning Veteran Explorer, which will help you ramp further. On the other hand we have Dryad Arbor which is returned to play right away. With Meren in the list i go for T1 GSZ @ 0 more often, if i don't have Therapy or Veteran Explorer. In that case, Meren becomes better early. All in all, with Arbor/Vet/DRS/GSZ ramping is a lot easier. If i go with GSZ 0 on T1, then i often lead with a dual land to make Wasteland little bit awkward. The benefit against Recurring Nightmare is that you do not need 2 creatures to be around and it doesn't cost extra mana, the con is offcourse that you have to wait for a turn to play the creature unless you have the experience counters.

Eldrazi aggro is not a bad matchup. They don't have flyers and we easily ramp by chumpblocking our vets and then deed them to death or go bigger with titans. On Ooze: I'd never keep her out of my 60 MD cards. Made me win lots of times against Burn and sometimes against Ant, and gets soon bigger than any Tarmogoyf on the table.

S&S and elves are a bad MU indeed, with Omniscence even worse. But I like to play with a really aggressive (aka anti-combo) SB, and things are not so bad.
You forgot also Reanimator and the random combo decks (belcher, all spells and so on) in the "sad" matchups, but... the more you play against them, the more you learn how to beat them (with the right SB).
By the way, the only unwinnable MU for us is Post, IMHO.

EDIT: on Eldrazi: the meta seems to be moving in a Blood Moon direction, so...Eldrazi deck seems to be on the downhill path. BTW my thougths were based on my feedback in the Eldrazi vs ScapeFit Matchup. The Junk/Jund matchup sould be slightly worse, but still I wouldn't call that a bad matchup.

[Yutao]

Hey guys. Just finished Top 8 at Gaming for Gains (Charity Legacy Tournament) with this pile. Shoutout to Sam Higgins for helping me out with the list.

22 Lands
4x Verdant Catacombs
3x Windswept Heath
2x Bayou
2x Scrubland
1x Savannah
3x Forest
2x Swamp
2x Plains
1x Phyrexian Tower
1x Volrath's Stronghold
1x Karakas (oops)

17 Creatures
4x Veteran Explorer
1x Deathrite Shaman
1x Qasali Pridemage
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Tireless Tracker
1x Nissa, Vastwood Seer
1x Eternal Witness
3x Siege Rhino
1x Thrun the Last Troll
1x Thragtusk
1x Sigarda, Host of Herons
1x Dragonlord Dromoka


10 Sorcery
4x Cabal Therapy
4x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Night's Whisper
1x Vindicate

6 Instant
3x Path to Exile
2x Abrupt Decay
1x Abzan Charm

4 Enchantment
3x Deed
1x Sylvan Library

1 Planeswalker
1x Kaya, Ghost Assasin

15 Sideboard
1x Abrupt Decay
3x Thoughtseize
1x Golgari Charm
1x Pithing Needle
1x Choke
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Extirpate
1x Gaddock Teeg
1x Melira
1x Ashen Rider
1x Reclamation Sage
1x Toxic Deluge

Round 1 vs Pox.
In game 1, I keep a double veteran explorer with a cabal therapy against his 2 sinkhole, 2 smallpox hand. He is never able to cast his sinkholes nor keep me off mana, so we sit there each with 4-6 lands trying to draw relevant cards. Eventually he lands a LOTV, but I rip Decay off the top. I eventually resolve a Sigarda, which makes it incredibly hard for him to win. Game 2, I hit no Vets, get savagely sinkholed down to two lands and he casts Ob Nixilis Reignited against me. Not the best game. In game three he keeps a one lander while I go DRS, into Tracker, into Rhino, into Thrun. He eventually hits the 2nd lands for a Smallpox, but ends up taking 15 on the swing back.
(1-0) (Phantom Tiger)

Round 2 vs Post-MUD.
In game 1, I double therapy, double veteran explorer his hand into oblivion and resolve Dragonlord. It's good enough to kill him. In game 2, he gets off to a fast start with Chalice on 1, Lodestone, and Wurmcoil. I manage to trade off my Scooze with his Lodestone allowing me to go Nissa, Flip her, Rec Sage his Chalice, Path your Wurmcoil. He then goes Platinum Angel, Chalice on Three, Kuldotha. I respond my finding Kaya, Path, and Abrupt Decay. Kaya+Rec Sage means no fun for MUD, but he was at a healthy 32 from Wurmcoil+Batterskull. Batterskull was eventually removed by the Kaya -2 and I managed to ultimate Nissa Vastwood to swing in for 40+. Planeswalkers are strong man.
(2-0) (Zombie Mob)

Round 3 vs Eldrazi-Post.
I therapy away his major threats, while his Eldrazi Scion cowers in the face of my Siegeing Rhinos. In game 2, I end up mulling to 4. End up going thoughtseize into a Rhino. He goes Ugin and later a Chalice on 4. Ugin>Rhino for some reason. I then run Kaya into another Rhino off the TOP. He Ugin -4s to 1 loyalty. I pass. He bolts me. I slam a Scooze. He -2 Ugin for some reason and I draw the greatest GSZ known to man. Managing to nimbly ignore his Chalice, I find my last Rhino and he has no answer. AHA UGIN, TAKE A RHINO TO THE FACE. Pernicious Deed was also clutch here, being able to take out his Thran Dynamos and Grim Monoliths as well as Eldrazi Scions.
(3-0)

Round 4 vs BR Reanimator/Storm.
T2 Iona,I concede. Game 2, t3 empty for 10. I block, and eventually stabilize at 4 with a Swagtusk. He top decks lotus petal, tendrils. Er. What. Yup.
(3-1) (Aphetto Exterminator)

Round 5 vs Enchantress.
Game 1, I end up one sided board wiping with a P-Deed, while also drawing cards off of Nissa Vastwood Seer. Siege Rhino not doing damage, but not targeted life drain was clutch. He ends up casting Emrakul, but loses on his upkeep to my Siege Rhino under his Parallax Wave. Rhino>Spaghetti. Game 2, I end up Thoughtseizing and Therapying away most of his relevant cards while he drew a lot of Lands. A pair of Rhinos combined with a key Golgari Charm managed to trample over his 0/1s.
(4-1) (Dan Dan)

Round 6 vs Lands.
OH BOY. A fast 20/20 forces a Path out of my hand. He then does it again. Jesus Marit Lage, won't you stay exiled? Abzan Charm deals with that. Aaaaaand another one. Welp. I GSZ for Scooze to stop him from Loaming. Then I slam Kaya to go to 22. He 20/20s on my end step and oh goody here she is again. I fall down to 2, eat my vet with my scooze and Kaya away his slightly larger than usual creature. He then savagely rips it again (by savagely rips I mean crop rot into it), but it's on his main phase. I'm at 1, he's at 3. WHAT'S ON TOP OF THE DECK. E-wit for Path. Oh that's nice. For game 2, things were slightly less exciting. I end up pathing his first 20/20. Surgical his Thespian Stage (he had a depths on board). I then hit him for increments of 2, because he kept Mazing my Rhino. Eternal witness did close to 14 damage that game and a GSZ for Rhino sealed the deal.
(5-1) (Yavimaya Ants)

5-1 is good enough for a first place seed into top 8!

Round 7 vs Food Chain
Game 1, I didn't find enough Rhinos and lose. Game 2, I get crushed. Oh Well. (Note: I did get to name Sarpadian Empires, Vol. VII against him. Which makes me the real winner here)
(5-2) (Myojin of Night's Reach)

I am now a divine spirit from Kamigawa, which was enough for 5th place at Gaming for Gains.

I really like Kaya in the main. It seems good against any form of prison/control.
Teeg never got to come in, but I did manage to dodge SnS and Storm all day.
3 Surgicals and 3 TS were mad clutch.
Top 8 was Aluren, SnS, Pox, Storm, Food Chain, B/R Reanimator/Storm, U/R Delver, and of course Rhino Fit.

[Bobmans]

Good job on the T8, and Great write up. Was truly fun to read. I did count 21 lands in the list.

Totally forgot Abzan Charm is a card to.

[sdematt]

4x Veteran Explorer
3x Deathrite Shaman
2x Qasali Pridemage
1x Scavenging Ooze
1x Eternal Witness
1x Tireless Tracker
4x Siege Rhino
1x Sigarda, Host of Herons
15

4x Green Sun's Zenith
2x Painful Truths
2x Sylvan Library
1x Night's Whisper
9

4x Cabal Therapy
3x Pernicious Deed
3x Path to Exile
3x Abrupt Decay
1x Vindicate
14


2x Phyrexian Tower
2x Forest
2x Plains
2x Swamp
2x Bayou
2x Savannah
1x Scrubland
4x Verdant Catacombs
4x Windswept Heath
21



//Sideboard

2x Ethersworn Canonist
1x Gaddock Teeg
2x Surgical Extraction
3x Thoughtseize
2x Lost Legacy
1x Zealous Persecution
1x Toxic Deluge
2x Pithing Needle
1x Sigarda, Host of Herons

Going to be trying this. Only change was getting rid of tracker, and just upping my Shaman and Qasali count.

[sdematt]

Or if people were thinking of running Atraxa, then you could also nut other people out and just run 2-3 Llawan in the sideboard for the lols. Nice Leovold/TNN/Meddling Mage, suckers. T2 Llawan off of Veteran is clutch, right?

-Matt

[Bobmans]

Or if people were thinking of running Atraxa, then you could also nut other people out and just run 2-3 Llawan in the sideboard for the lols. Nice Leovold/TNN/Meddling Mage, suckers. T2 Llawan off of Veteran is clutch, right?

-Matt
Fetch, Fatal Push, go. But seriously, pulling that of would be Sweet, yet I'd rather have Deluge or w/e mass removal in that spot as it also takes care of DRS and the likes. All of which is more useful in other MU's as well. Maybe an answer against misthollow griffin?

[Mantis]

Llawan works great vs Aluren as well with Baleful Strix, Coiling Oracle, Shardless Agent and Parasitic Strix. Nice find, I like it!

[Yutao]

Good job on the T8, and Great write up. Was truly fun to read. I did count 21 lands in the list.

Totally forgot Abzan Charm is a card to.

Ah totally forgot the Karakas.

Karakas is either the most impactful land or the least impactful land. Sometimes it kills 20/20s. Other times it's this non fetchable basic plains and gets wastelanded.

[Bobmans]

Ah totally forgot the Karakas.

Karakas is either the most impactful land or the least impactful land. Sometimes it kills 20/20s. Other times it's this non fetchable basic plains and gets wastelanded.
This. It (has the potential) improves some of our worst MU's. And at least it providers mana. So it is never dead. When it is nog relevant and eats a waste it is fine to.

[MrIggins]

I was also at Gaming for Gains yesterday, playing the following. We had 61 players, so 6 rounds with a very good record required to make top 8.

4 Veteran Explorer
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Eternal Witness
1 Fierce Empath
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1 Thragtusk
1 Inferno Titan
1 Woodland Bellower
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Toxic Deluge
3 Night's Whisper
2 Diabolic Intent
2 Lightning Bolt

2 Pernicious Deed
4 Sneak Attack

4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Dryad Arbor
3 Bayou
2 Taiga
2 Badlands
3 Forest
2 Swamp
2 Mountain
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Phyrexian Tower

sb::
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Lost Legacy
1 To the Slaughter
1 Red Elemental Blast
2 Blood Moon
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Pithing Needle
2 Engineered Plague
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Surgical Extraction


Round 1: Eric with Merfolk- 2-0 win
Game 1, I have the nuts. Turn 1 Veteran, turn 2 Tower, sac Veteran, Therapy away your Force of Will, slam Sneak Attack. Turn 3, spaghetti. Turn 4, Zenith for Empath for more spaghetti.
Game 2 is interesting, he has a slowish draw but keeps me off colors with a Tidal Warrior for a couple turns. I eventually get up to Wurmcoil Engine and am able to race his two lords. Inferno Titan comes down to seal the deal after a couple turns of that.
1-0

Round 2: Roger with Sneak/Show- 2-1 win
Game 1 he has turn 2 Show and Tell and I concede to conceal information.
Game 2, I get in some early damage, Therapy away his Sneak Attack leaving a hand full of monsters. He finds Show and Tell off the top, his Emrakul vs my Bellower + Veteran. I know he has no counters, so I am able to Intent away the Veteran and kill the eldrazi with To the Slaughter. I hit him for 6 and he cantrips, then finds another Show and Tell. He has another eldrazi, I have Eternal Witness for another To the Slaughter. He dies.
Game 3 I'm on the draw and I keep the following 7: Forest, Taiga, Night's Whisper x2, Therapy, Sneak Attack, Emrakul. My reasoning is, this hand beats a Show and Tell every time, and I have outs to hit black mana in a turn or two before he can get Sneak online. It's a little greedy but I'm happy with the keep. Anyway, he casts Show and Tell on turn 1 and immediately concedes to my Emrakul. Justice.
2-0

Round 3: Harlan with BUG Delver- 2-1 win
Game 1 is brutal, he has turn 2 Hymn, turn 3 Hymn+Delver, turn 4 Delver and I die without doing much.
Game 2, I take some early damage from a Goyf before Veteran comes down. Wurmcoil Engine shows up not long after, and Diabolic Intent for Pernicious Deed seals the deal.
Game 3, we go back and forth for a bit, his hand is light on action after I Bolt his turn 1 Deathrite. He sticks Liliana, forces my first Blood Moon, but I'm able to fetch up Dryad Arbor to keep Lili off her ultimate and resolve the second Blood Moon. I eventually find some action while chipping away at Liliana with a 1/1 mountain, and he dies.
3-0

Round 4: Michael with ANT- 0-2 loss
Game 1, he Probes me and sees a Therapy, Ponders and passes. I Therapy blind and name Dark Ritual, assuming he'd have played out his artifact mana because he saw the discard spell. He has an LED, and Dark Ritual is the top card from Ponder. He untaps and kills me.
Game 2, I mulligan to 4 but am able to make a game of it because he just doesn't find action. End up getting him to 3 after he has to use Chain of Vapor to stop Tireless Tracker from killing him. He finds Infernal Tutor on the last turn and has just enough to chain tutors and Tendrils me out. Womp womp.
3-1

Still live for top 8 if I win out.

Round 5: Adam on Lands (this was Yutao's round 6 opponent) - 0-2 loss
Game 1, I keep a land-light hand but Zenith for Arbor and follow up with a Tribe Elder. I end up being a turn too slow on Sneak->Emrakul as he plays Dark Depths as his eighth permanent. He floats mana on the trigger, makes a 20/20, and I die.
Game 2, neither of us have much going on. I keep a hand on the back of Deathrite, Surgical and Lost Legacy but don't find a third land after I get Wasted. I'm able to set up Sneak but have to pass the turn because he has Karakas in play, so I need a second activation to stick Emrakul. He has Krosan Grip. Welp. Eventually Deed away his Tireless Tracker and Surgical that, trying to keep him off action and just hope to topdeck better. I see a hand of 2x Loam with nothing going on. Then I punt, and Lost Legacy away his Loams. I'm too used to Slaughter Games and forgot that LL lets him draw cards if I take cards from his hand. What I should have done was taken away his Crop Rotations. Anyway, the 2 cards include Depths to go with the Stage already on board, and I die. Not a mistake to make again. Not a guaranteed win if that hadn't happened, but at least we get to keep playing.
3-2, dead for top 8

I play Round 6 anyway to try and get some more games. Opponent is playing Zoo, which it turns out still loses to Pernicious Deed. So much for useful testing.

Finish 4-2 in 12th place.


Thoughts on the deck and on the day:
-Diabolic Intent is still really, really good. Being an un-interactable sac outlet for Veteran came up a couple times against Delver.
-Dryad Arbor has me convinced. I never played it in Scape but this build wants it and loves it.
-Meren was -fine- never really mattered much though
-Very light on sideboard cards for storm, but I don't really want Thoughtseizes in the sideboard either. We have some options of course, but space is tight.
-Blood Moons were a good choice even if they didn't come up much.
-Night's Whisper was fine, I'm pretty happy with 3
-Tireless Tracker was pretty lackluster honestly, surprising because I'm very high on the card usually.
-Stronghold came up exactly once. Depending on whether the newer UW control decks start popping up, this could make its way out of the list for a second Phyrexian Tower or something, just trying to be more explosive. I'm fine with it for now, but it's on the watch list.
-Bolt could have been Push in all scenarios except against Storm, where it stayed in the deck due to too few sideboard cards, and was a live draw to win in game 2. Still fine with that choice, since I'm bringing in Decays against Delver decks anyway to supplement them.

[Dalton!]

My Sneak list looks similar but in place of the wurmcoil i play Rune scarred demon. Pretty good in all it does. I like him much.

How are your expieriences with the wurmcoil? Is it not too soft to swords? In theory it seems amazing.

Is Nissa out of style since the ban? I testet Vital Force and vastwood seer but can not decide if she still has a place

...and i am still not sold on nights whispers. I do not know, but painful truth seems so much better.

Nevertheless congrats in your Finish.

[MrIggins]

My Sneak list looks similar but in place of the wurmcoil i play Rune scarred demon. Pretty good in all it does. I like him much.

How are your expieriences with the wurmcoil? Is it not too soft to swords? In theory it seems amazing.

Is Nissa out of style since the ban? I testet Vital Force and vastwood seer but can not decide if she still has a place

...and i am still not sold on nights whispers. I do not know, but painful truth seems so much better.

Nevertheless congrats in your Finish.

Wurmcoil was very good, and contributes really well to the fair matchups. Either snuck in or hardcast, Wurmcoil can outright beat most fair plans or at least keep them busy for long enough for you to find another threat to close.

It is weak to Swords, I'll grant that. My metagame is really BUG-heavy, where Wurmcoil is insane, and it's comparable to most other monsters we could be playing in unfair matchups.

I like Rune-Scarred Demon as well. Flying lets it ignore TNN and beat up Delvers. Both cards help in the fail case of Sneaking in a monster, hitting once, and that just not being enough. Sometimes you need to sneak in a threat and having it leave some lasting value (another monster in the case of the Demon, 6 life and some tokens in the case of Wurmcoil) is really good.

To that end actually, I've been considering trying out Grave Titan in place of Inferno Titan since Death and Taxes seems to have fallen totally off the map in my area. Elves exists somewhat and Inferno is obviously better there but in a room full of Leovolds and Tarmogoyfs, I would much rather have Wurmcoil and Grave Titan than anything else (besides Emrakul, obviously).

Painful Truths is an objectively more powerful card. I won't argue that. Night's Whisper costing 2 mana has mattered a lot, though. Much easier to play through Daze, much less often that you have a turn 1 Vet/Deathrite/Zenith for Arbor get countered or Plowed or something and so your turn 2 is really weak. I've just found more openings to fit in Night's Whisper than I initially expected. Also a lot better at helping you fight through an early Wasteland. Give it a shot, it's possible a split is right but I've been very satisfied with it thus far.

RE: Nissas- if Woodland Bellower could fetch her, I'd most likely be on flip Nissa instead of/in addition to Tireless Tracker. Nissa Vital Force could easily find her way back into the equation as well, she's obviously great, but it's hard to find slots for power over slots for consistency in this deck IMO. The deck slots are tight and I'd rather focus more on getting to our mid/late power plays than having another one, as powerful as it is.

[Yutao]

RE: Nissas- if Woodland Bellower could fetch her, I'd most likely be on flip Nissa instead of/in addition to Tireless Tracker. Nissa Vital Force could easily find her way back into the equation as well, she's obviously great, but it's hard to find slots for power over slots for consistency in this deck IMO. The deck slots are tight and I'd rather focus more on getting to our mid/late power plays than having another one, as powerful as it is.

Have you thought about Wood Elves? It has a worse ceiling than Flip Nissa, but it does ramp you and at worst can be sacked to D-Intent.

[MrIggins]

Have you thought about Wood Elves? It has a worse ceiling than Flip Nissa, but it does ramp you and at worst can be sacked to D-Intent.

I've played a lot of Wood Elves in the past, big fan of the card in general (fetch Bayou, cast and flashback Therapy was one of my favorite things to do in Scapewish). Could be better than STE in this list for Intent considerations. I don't know what else the cut would be but it's a good suggestion. I love STE but this might fill the niche a little better.

[Echelon]

@matt: Night's Whisper over a third Painful Truths. How's that working out for you?

[sdematt]

@matt: Night's Whisper over a third Painful Truths. How's that working out for you?

Not as bad as I would have thought, considering I've definitely Painful Truth'd for 2 before...

[Echelon]

Would you ever consider going down to all Night's Whispers? I mean, speed & manacurves are a thing.

[Memories of the Time]

I'm just back from an 8 turns tournament in Italy with Nyx Fit, with many sad stories and some thoughts.
I've ended 3-2-3:

T1 UWR Control with Nemesi by a good player: He somehow steals the g1, i won the g2 and there's no time for g3... He said that he has been lucky for the draw

T2 Deathblade: The only italian player of Deathblade who plays 4 basic lands, obv. But the real problem is g1, when after have destroyed his hand with 2 cabal he had only a SFM and topdeck, in a row, Batterskul and Jace (not bad), g2 mana screw for me and i never seen the 4° land even with Library, nice.

T3 Patriot: Very fun and interesting MU, i won 2-1 losing a game under humility for not finding ANYTHING under library for just... 10 turns? And being overcomed by his creatures, lol.

T4 WB: Lol, no words: won g1, g2 and g3 he make Seize-Sculler-Rip or something like that... again, can't find any of the 10 outs in time and i died beaten by sculler, lol.

Then i've won against Grixis, Team America, draw with... i don't remember, and lost from Reanimator at the last turn.

I didn't think that Top was so important for this deck, but it's a very big loss. Except for Reanimator, i've only lost for variance and stuff, in a very bad way... And i don't know how to manage this problem =/ i was playing 3 Library 3 Truths yesterday.

[Echelon]

Hasn't Nyx Fit also lost its most important prey, with the banning of SDT?

[Memories of the Time]

Hasn't Nyx Fit also lost its most important prey, with the banning of SDT?

I don't think that's a big reason : almost no deck had a really good mu against a great miracle player. I still strongly believe that nyx is the strongest version of the deck (i haven't tried sneak anyway), obv with the usual downside of not playing brainstorm ^^

[Navsi]

I don't think that's a big reason : almost no deck had a really good mu against a great miracle player. I still strongly believe that nyx is the strongest version of the deck (i haven't tried sneak anyway), obv with the usual downside of not playing brainstorm ^^

Nyx has the most raw power, probably tied with Sneak, but it's too vulnerable to variance in my opinion now. Going to be giving Vessel some more testing, but beyond that I don't think there are any options that are solid enough.

[rubblekill]

I hope someone of you guys will be able to make some combo version of this deck viable even without top, but I strongly believe that the ban hit the combo versions the hardest. Now we have a clunky pile without being able to assemble A + B without cantrip or ways to manipulate the top of the deck.

Is there a combo finish in bug colors? Brainstorm could boost the consistency pretty well, plus I love perilous research in blue.

For now I'm playing 4 night whispers in GB and I love it. The card velocity is needed and the card is cheap, but I don't want to warp the entire deck with 4 confidants (@Brael: nothing bad about it, but once you play confidant you play an entirely different beast).

Thoughts on some combo in U? Do they even exist?

[Echelon]

Well, it does give you access to Brainstorm + Ponder. And depending on what you're trying to achieve, you can run a number of Diabolic Intent.

You could also try going for some sort of BUG Delver Fit list, I suppose. Between Delver of Secrets, Bone Picker and Sultai Scavenger (or even Tombstalker), you have a nice little airforce.

Add in Brainstorm, Ponder, Daze, FoW, Fatal Push, Cabal Therapy and Veteran Explorer and you almost have a full deck. Bone Picker and Sultai Scavenger even play well with Pernicious Deed.

You could also omit counters and go for some Baleful Strixes and a Sylvan Library or 2. GSZ, a Meren for some late game grinding.

[Navsi]

I hope someone of you guys will be able to make some combo version of this deck viable even without top, but I strongly believe that the ban hit the combo versions the hardest. Now we have a clunky pile without being able to assemble A + B without cantrip or ways to manipulate the top of the deck.

Is there a combo finish in bug colors? Brainstorm could boost the consistency pretty well, plus I love perilous research in blue.

For now I'm playing 4 night whispers in GB and I love it. The card velocity is needed and the card is cheap, but I don't want to warp the entire deck with 4 confidants (@Brael: nothing bad about it, but once you play confidant you play an entirely different beast).

Thoughts on some combo in U? Do they even exist?

There are some combos which can be found with Gifts Ungiven or Intuition, which is probably the best option. Unfortunately there isn't anything which ends the game immediately for less than 7 mana as far as I'm aware - splashing white for Unburial Rites is probably the way to go. If we can find something that lets us go endstep Gifts - untap with 5-6 mana - win the game immediately, that would be great. Anything less solid than that is probably not good enough, given that we're making ourselves vulnerable to graveyard hate in most possible combos.

Cunning Wish is another potential 'combo' piece.

Other options:
Eternal Command (Witness is already fine, and Cryptic is a good card on its own)
Something involving Time Warp (witness, Meren, sac outlet maybe? Maybe something with Panoptic Mirror, if we can survive long enough)
Tooth And Nail (plenty of combos here)
Necrotic Ooze combos
Helm of Obedience + Leyline
Palinchron combos

[Ralf]

As far as "Cunning Wish" and Nic Fit BUG strategies are concerned, I'd say that I've tested a lot of "insta kill" cards:
- Empty the Pits is very nice (vs Midrange).
- Hatred (vs Combo) is maybe the best option (expensive but alpha strike nonetheless)
- Crypt incursion (vs Tempo) will give you enough time to take control of the game

My two cents :p

[rubblekill]

Whoa, that is some sweet food for thought! Wishes, all of them, could be explored more probably

[Brael]

Well, it does give you access to Brainstorm + Ponder. And depending on what you're trying to achieve, you can run a number of Diabolic Intent. Brainstwell with Pernicious Deed.

You could also omit counters and go for some Baleful Strixes and a Sylvan Library or 2. GSZ, a Meren for some late game grinding.

Brainstorm and Ponder make you too creature light.

[Echelon]

Brainstorm and Ponder make you too creature light.

Not if they take over your CA/library manipulation slots. But that would mean giving up GSZ.

[MrIggins]

It's possible a Protean Hulk shell exists, with Gifts+Rites or Intuition to set yourself up. Walking Ballista has reduced the size of the kill package by a lot and made it surprisingly resilient to spot removal.

1: Sac hulk get Phyrexian Delver(or Karmic Guide)+Viscera Seer, Delver returns Hulk (they need to plow the sac outlet here if they're going to plow something)
2: Sac Hulk get Mikaeus the Unhallowed+Walking Ballista, kill the opponent. A single Plow does not disrupt anything at this stage.

I'm not advocating for it necessarily, but it's the most compact combo I can think of to fit the shell you're talking about.

[Navsi]

It's possible a Protean Hulk shell exists, with Gifts+Rites or Intuition to set yourself up. Walking Ballista has reduced the size of the kill package by a lot and made it surprisingly resilient to spot removal.

1: Sac hulk get Phyrexian Delver+Viscera Seer, Delver returns Hulk (they need to plow the sac outlet here if they're going to plow something)
2: Sac Hulk get Mikaeus the Unhallowed+Walking Ballista, kill the opponent. A single Plow does not disrupt anything at this stage.

I'm not advocating for it necessarily, but it's the most compact combo I can think of to fit the shell you're talking about.

If you're playing white for Unburial Rites anyway, I'd rather have Karmic Guide than Phyrexian Delver since it does the same thing but lets you combo while below 8 life.

Edit: The most compact Intuition combo is probably Loam / Depths / Stage if you're facing a deck that can't deal with it, since recurring 20/20s will get there eventually.

[square_two]

In BUG, just run 3 Jace TMS and 4 Trackers, you'll be fine. If you really have to play some topend to make you feel like you are playing nic fit, then throw in a Titania or a Consecrated Sphinx or a Grave Titan.

Ponder I feel like is a bit much, but I've enjoyed 3-4 Brainstorm. Only utility land you need is a single Stronghold.

[aspsnake]

2: Sac Hulk get Mikaeus the Unhallowed+Walking Ballista, kill the opponent. A single Plow does not disrupt anything at this stage.

How come a single Plow not disrupting anything on this stage? Your opponent can always plow/karakas mikaeus in response to the undying trigger, or deathrite/surgical ballista. We'll need an extra round of rotating into a sylvan safekeeper+karmic guide and an extra sac engine activation (or a phantasmal image to copy guide) to make it hard to disrupt.


1: Sac hulk get Phyrexian Delver(or Karmic Guide)+Viscera Seer, Delver returns Hulk (they need to plow the sac outlet here if they're going to plow something)

Since we're playing blue, I actually like Body Double way more than Delver or Guide. It doesn't have an etb trigger, which means that your opponent can't respond with a deathrite to break the combo (once hulk's trigger resolves it's already too late - and if they do it in resp to hulk's activation, you just look for mike+ballista and kill them hoping that they don't have a swords), you don't lose any life and it's a single blue rather than a double white/black to cast if you manually draw it. The only downside is that you cannot do the extra round of tutoring with a Phantasmal Image to ensure swords protection.

Body Double: http://thumbs.ebaystatic.com/images/g/fsIAAOSwal5YJhPU/s-l225.jpg

[Brael]

Not if they take over your CA/library manipulation slots. But that would mean giving up GSZ.

It means giving up GSZ and giving up some creatures. Keep in mind that the real reason to run the cantrip shell is FoW, so you're also giving up those slots. They force your deck skeleton into looking like Delver. Which I admit is a successful skeleton, but is kind of odd in a ramp deck. If you're going to play fair, I think you need to be getting more board presence from your mana.

[MrIggins]

How come a single Plow not disrupting anything on this stage? Your opponent can always plow/karakas mikaeus in response to the undying trigger, or deathrite/surgical ballista. We'll need an extra round of rotating into a sylvan safekeeper+karmic guide and an extra sac engine activation (or a phantasmal image to copy guide) to make it hard to disrupt.


If they plow Mikaeus with Ballista in the graveyard, you sacrifice Karmic Guide, trigger undying, sacrifice Mikaeus with that on the stack, return Karmic Guide to undying, return Mikaeus, continue. If they try to exile the Ballista, you do the same trick with undying your return creature and return Ballista again.

EDIT: Nevermind, I knew there was a reason not to use Double. Thanks Navsi.

[Navsi]

How come a single Plow not disrupting anything on this stage? Your opponent can always plow/karakas mikaeus in response to the undying trigger, or deathrite/surgical ballista. We'll need an extra round of rotating into a sylvan safekeeper+karmic guide and an extra sac engine activation (or a phantasmal image to copy guide) to make it hard to disrupt.

If they target Mikaeus with a removal spell, you can sacrifice Karmic Guide to viscera seer, then respond to the undying trigger by sacrificing Mikaeus. KGuide returns, brings back Mikaeus, and the combo continues. You can also respond to grave hate in the same way by saccing Guide, and recurring Ballista with Guide in response to the extraction effect.

Mikaeus + Ballista doesn't kill on its own (Ballista gets +1/+1 from Mikaeus, so you either need a sac outlet or a way of turning infinite death triggers from Ballista pinging itself into a kill).

Edit:


I suppose this would work with Body Double also, you sac it trigger undying sac Mike return Double as Mike and keep going.

It doesn't work with Body Double because Body Double you sacrificed to fetch Mikaeus, so it's in your graveyard not on the battlefield.

[Ralf]

In BUG, just run 3 Jace TMS and 4 Trackers, you'll be fine. If you really have to play some topend to make you feel like you are playing nic fit, then throw in a Titania or a Consecrated Sphinx or a Grave Titan.

Ponder I feel like is a bit much, but I've enjoyed 3-4 Brainstorm. Only utility land you need is a single Stronghold.

Snapcaster / Strix / Glen Elendra are also very neat.

The pb with BUG is the "clock", which is usually really bad as the deck is definitely very slow as we usually don't play two of the best beaters in BUG: Tarmo and DRS.

So basically we've got 3 known strategies:

- SULTAI Superfriends (Mc Darby Special is the most known for US players). I've posted a very old list (in a former thread) with which I had quite a strong runs (before Mc D.). Slow as hell, unfortunately. Not to mention that when your opponents are locked out, they tend to spend even more time to play, thinking that they might have an "out of jail's key"...

- SULTAI Control Less heavy on PW (usually just Jace if counterspells or Jace/lili without counterspells). This deck tends to play the OLD Pernicious/Jace deck but with Veteran+Cabal Therapy. To be honest, I think the old pernicious/jace is better. Your top end is either Frost Titan / Grave Titan / Sphinx / "you name it".

- SULTAI POD This is the "A - Ranked" Nic Fit deck (GP top 8 or top 16) and, without any doubts, one of the main reasons to play a SULTAI version of the deck in the first place. I invite everyone to try a SULTAI POD before trying anything else.

Cheers,

Ralf

[MrIggins]

I've been idly theorycrafting a BUG Traverse build topping out at 13-mana Emrakul, but I don't have a list to share. There's probably something there, though.

[Dzogchen]

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to share some successes with two particular cards I'd been testing that I think open some interesting possibilities. Since Amonkhet came out I've been testing Rhonas the Indomitable and Examplar of Strength in my abzan list. Rhonas seemed really good on paper and I've ALWAYS wanted a GSZ'able way to kill my own veteran explorer. I decided to post about it now since I Top 4'd a GPT yesterday with them and got some great feedback and finally a decent amount of reps with them in there. Been working on this list for a while since the banning of top and I think its finally getting close to where I want it for Vegas. For reference:

1 Baneslayer Angel
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Dragonlord Dromoka
1 Eternal Witness
1 Exemplar of Strength
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Rhonas the Indomitable
2 Siege Rhino
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
1 Thragtusk
4 Veteran Explorer

2 Abrupt Decay
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Fatal Push
4 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Painful Truths
1 Path to Exile
3 Pernicious Deed
2 Sylvan Library
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Nissa, Vital Force

2 Bayou
3 Forest
1 Karakas
1 Phyrexian Tower
2 Plains
2 Savannah
1 Scrubland
2 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath

SB:
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Circle Of Protection: Red
2 Diabolic Edict
1 Dread Of Night
1 Engineered Plague
1 Pithing Needle
1 Reclamation Sage
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Thoughtseize
1 Toxic Deluge

For the GPT, as a quick rundown:

Round 1: Grixis Smasher (2-1, 1-0 total)
Round 2: UWR Stoneblade (1-2, 1-1 total)
Round 3: BUG Delver (2-0, 2-1 total)
Round 4: Dredge (2-0, 3-1 total)
Round 5: BUG Delver (2-1, 4-1 total)
Round 6: Grixis Delver (2-1, 5-1 total, ended second in swiss rnds)
Semis: Grixis Delver (2-0)
Quarters: Lands (0-2)

It was a decent run and I was pretty pleased with it. Now, what I wanted to point out in this post is that the two new cards have been performing very well.

Rhonas - Dodges a great deal of removal and is absolutely fantastic value at 3 mana. Easy to GSZ in the right spots, and if you have open mana his ability is great. It can turn ANY of your other creatures into a good threat with some excess mana. With lifelink guys he can really pull you ahead as well, even for one activation the extra 2 life matters. When he is 'activated' by a 4 power creature he is a stone cold amazing blocker. He was holding back Gurmag Anglers all day for me yesterday.

Exemplar - The value in Rhonas was definitely more clear to me that this guy initially, but as I play more games with it, I've started to really see more value here. Other players noted it to me as well yesterday. Many of these lines assume there being a Vet around, but that's why I've included the card in the first place so I'll just chat about it. Being able to GSZ for 2, kill a vet on your terms and get lands AND a 4/4 is a great option to have. If you have it in hand, its essentially a free 4/4 since it replaces the lands to cast it. However its also been particularly good in conjunction WITH Rhonas. Hes a very cheap way to enable Rhonas to attack and block, and even if you have to put the counters ON Rhonas, sure, hes smaller, but it still dodges a ton of removal and can now block with deathtouch. There were a few times where I didn't have a vet out, and Exemplar became an expendable 1/1 that allowed me to flashback Cabal Therapy and take away other cards.

They've just been a nice pair all around and I think they've got potential - just wanted to throw that out there! Thanks guys!

[square_two]

Snapcaster / Strix / Glen Elendra are also very neat.

The pb with BUG is the "clock", which is usually really bad as the deck is definitely very slow as we usually don't play two of the best beaters in BUG: Tarmo and DRS.

If you aren't playing 4 Strix in bug fit, I think you are doing it very wrong. If you don't have 4 Deathrites, I think you are playing it sub-optimally.

Honestly, I haven't felt like the issue is the clock. I've played SFM junk fit, hated how grindy and slow it was. I've played sneak fit which is probably the fastest version. Bug is a comfortable middle.

I think one issue is that cheap removal options (push, bolt, decay) can't handle big dudes very well - having to rely on Jace to bounce an Angler is a tad annoying. Strix does help here.

Another issue is weakness to both Moon and Chalice since this version lacks full GSZ playset and has more 1-drops, and fetches for duals early in order to better facilitate Strix. I've had more losses to Port than with other nic fit variants I've played with.

I'm not a fan of Pod, just think it is too cute and doesn't do enough. I'd rather just get out Meren which imo has enough value generation alongside Strixes...have seen enough opponents simply concede to Meren to make me confident in that. Walkers I think has some validity - I'd try out an idea for a 10-walker list but don't really care to shell out 60 tix for the Gideons and Oath of Nissas - also a bit undecided whether stretching the manabase for Strixes are worth it there when that version could be junk, run only Vets + E Witness or two, and run a couple more wrath effects. (Well, junk + splash for Jaces)

[Yutao]

I'm not a fan of Pod, just think it is too cute and doesn't do enough. I'd rather just get out Meren which imo has enough value generation alongside Strixes...have seen enough opponents simply concede to Meren to make me confident in that. Walkers I think has some validity - I'd try out an idea for a 10-walker list but don't really care to shell out 60 tix for the Gideons and Oath of Nissas - also a bit undecided whether stretching the manabase for Strixes are worth it there when that version could be junk, run only Vets + E Witness or two, and run a couple more wrath effects. (Well, junk + splash for Jaces)

I'm with you on pod. I played a fair bit of Junk Pod before Worchester and ended up disliking how slow it was. Sometimes it was just a dead card. Other times it cost 4 life to put on the table and activate, which is pretty medium. We also can't run 4 to maximize consistency (unless you're a certified mad lad). BUG Fit needs some strong 3-5 drops and I believe the best beater is just Thrun.

[Ricardio]

http://i.imgur.com/VGSmNzv.png
4-1 mtgo league

2-1 4c Loam Fire (sigarda is amazing
2-0 Deadguy Ale (didnt feel close all match
2-1 Canadian Thresh ( played around daze and kept land heavy hands. EZ
1-2 ANT ( g1 T2'd me. g2 i t3 Legacy his only tendrils. g2 T2'd me again)
2-0 Bug Delver (hymn version) (rhino and sigarda are great)

Leylines are probably overkill and should be some surgicals and other stuff.

changes to the deck:
-2 nights whisper, +1 sylvan Lib, +1 Painful truth (they were low impact)
-4 leylines, +3 Extirpate (surgicals are 27 tix compared to 3ea) +1 lost legacy

[rubblekill]

http://i.imgur.com/VGSmNzv.png
4-1 mtgo league

2-1 4c Loam Fire (sigarda is amazing
2-0 Deadguy Ale (didnt feel close all match
2-1 Canadian Thresh ( played around daze and kept land heavy hands. EZ
1-2 ANT ( g1 T2'd me. g2 i t3 Legacy his only tendrils. g2 T2'd me again)
2-0 Bug Delver (hymn version) (rhino and sigarda are great)

Leylines are probably overkill and should be some surgicals and other stuff.

Woha, welcome back! And congrats! I'll test your list, it is useful to test the deck played by other online players

[Kanti]

I couldn't think of anywhere else to post this janky interaction than here, so here goes; Leovold+Time Spiral looks brutal. If anyone plays BUGfit with MD Leovolds, can you fit x1 Time Spiral in there and tell me how it goes?

[Echelon]

4-1 mtgo league

2-1 4c Loam Fire (sigarda is amazing
2-0 Deadguy Ale (didnt feel close all match
2-1 Canadian Thresh ( played around daze and kept land heavy hands. EZ
1-2 ANT ( g1 T2'd me. g2 i t3 Legacy his only tendrils. g2 T2'd me again)
2-0 Bug Delver (hymn version) (rhino and sigarda are great)

Leylines are probably overkill and should be some surgicals and other stuff.

changes to the deck:
-2 nights whisper, +1 sylvan Lib, +1 Painful truth (they were low impact)
-4 leylines, +3 Extirpate (surgicals are 27 tix compared to 3ea) +1 lost legacy

Buddy! You back to stay?

[Yutao]

I couldn't think of anywhere else to post this janky interaction than here, so here goes; Leovold+Time Spiral looks brutal. If anyone plays BUGfit with MD Leovolds, can you fit x1 Time Spiral in there and tell me how it goes?

Leovold+Dark Deal/Days Undoing does the same thing, for a lot less mana.

[Ricardio]

Good to see you, Echelon and Rubblekill.

I hope to be back for now.
Lost my job, going back to school and Miracles dying.
Aiming for greatness.

[PanosIs]

Hello guys, new to Legacy here, I went to GP Bologna for side-events the last weekend and decided to make a Legacy deck for the funs of it, not much play here in Greece but it's still good to have a deck around. In any case, here is the list that I ran with, some budget restrictions and some cards-I-could-not-find restrictions in the manabase (Duals and Phyrexian Tower/Volrath's Stronghold respectively):

Nic Fit
Creatures 17
4 Veteran Explorer
3 Siege Rhino
2 Tireless Tracker
2 Deathrite Shaman
1 Anafenza, the Foremost
1 Eternal Witness
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Thragtusk
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons

Noncreatures 19
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Abzan Charm
1 Painful Truths
2 Sylvan Library

3 Path to Exile
2 Pernicious Deed
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Vindicate

Planeswalkers 2
1 Kaya, Ghost Assassin
1 Nissa, Vital Force

Lands 22
4 Windswept Heath
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Temple Garden
2 Overgrown Tomb
2 Ghost Quarter
4 Forest
2 Plains
2 Swamp

Sideboard 15
3 Thoughtseize
3 Lost Legacy
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Golgari Charm
1 Glissa, the Traitor
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Pithing Needle
1 Fracturing Gust

Some notes about the list (Disregard throw-together-cards-I-happened-to-have-there sideboard).
1) I like the 4 Veteran Explorer 2 Deathrite Shaman split, allows for a lot of consistency in landing a 3 mana creature on turn 2.
2) Rhinos are the bomb in fair matchups, but 3 is too many, I'd probably play 2.
3) I found Nissa, Vital Force to be underwhelming, her -3 was often too clunky and I think we can do better for 5 hasty damage.
4) On the other hand Kaya, Ghost Assassin was amazing, all three abilities were relevant in most of the games I played her, gaining life is nice against Delver and TNN decks, and she provides with card advantage and utility that is quite nice.
5) Abzan Charm is quite often better than Painful Truths, I will probably cut one for the other or try Night's Whisper.
6) Trackers did seem quite slow, I'm thinking of replacing them with something else.
7) Vindicate is quite quite useful, but as stated Pulse would probably be better.
8) Playing without a full playset of Green Sun's Zenith is a huge mistake.
9) Golgari Charm out of the sideboard was clutch in a lot of matchups, -1/-1 solves a lot of problems for our deck. (TNN, Elfballs among the chief offenders)

Now, besides the list I went 2-2 and 3-split in the two legacy scheduled events. The matches were as follows (From memory):
Saturday event:
Match 1: Alluren - WIN
Game 1: I play cabal on t1 and follow with a fair plan that outlasts his fair hand, does draw Alluren that gets hit along with some other stuff by a Deed and does never find Shardless to gain an advantage, I trade with his Strixs and slam Rhinos off an active library for the win.
Game 2: Cabal hits his filtering and he's left with a mediocre hand, he then gets hit by Lost Legacy for Alluren to lock him out of the combo and win.

Match 2: Enchantress - LOSS
Game 1: I go under him and Pernicious Deed takes care of problematic enchantments as he dies to Tracker
Game 2: Get locked out by double enchantress and fail to find Gust, Deed or Golgari Charm to cut his card advantage off, he has sided in Helm of Obedience combo which I miss with Lost Legacy and die
Game 3: The grindiest game, we play a back and forth game of CA, finally he manages to get an Enchantress' Presence running with Enlightened Tutor but I Vindicate it, we go into extra turns and one turn before I beat him he finds Helm-RIP

Match 3: Elves - LOSS
Game 1: I Cabal for Natural Order, see double Glimpse and Heritage, loose a turn afterwards
Game 2: I Cabal for Glimpse, see Natural Order which he can fire turn 2, loose

Match 4: UR Delver-Burn - WIN
Game 1: He plays a bunch of irrelevant creatures like Delver and Stormchaser Mage, I play Siege Rhinos. Win.
Game 2: I board in Kitchen FInks and Thragtusk, Cabal away his filtering, burry him in lifegain and win with huge creatures.

Sunday Event:
Match 1: Death and Taxes - WIN
Game 1: He plays a fair game with Vial on, but no Ports to cut my mana, so my Rhinos overtake him.
Game 2: He gets a quick Stoneforge into Jitte, which I Pithing Needle, he topdecks a Batterskull which gains him a lot of life, but I'm slamming in with Sigarda. I Reclamation his Batterskull forcing the bounce and vindicate when he replays it.

Match 2: Burn - WIN
Game 1: I know he is red, but assume he's on Stompy, name Blood Moon, see a shitetonne of burn spells, loose a few turns afterwards.
Game 2: Cabal for Price of Progress grabs two cards and I followup with Rhinos and Finks.
Game 3: Same deal, I grab his Vortex with Cabal and bury him in lifegain.

Match 3: Grixis Delver - WIN
Game 1: He plays a fair game with Delver and Anglers. I Cabal for FoW and see two Decays threatening the Library in my hand, next turn I flashback, he Breainstorms and I name Ponder, hitting two, he's behind from that point on and Sigarda seals the deal.
Game 2: I have an active Library for most of the game and am slamming Rhinos, he doesn't have any fliers and an Abzan Charm makes a Rhino 6/7 which beats everything he has.

Match 4: BUG TNN - LOOSE
Game 1: He plays a fair game, slams TNN, FoWs my Deed and I flood in lands.
Game 2: We play a slow game of TNNs vs Siege Rhinos, finally I sweep the board with Golgari Charm, but he gets a Jace which win him the game a few turns later.

Overall I'm extremely happy with the games, especially for my first legacy tournament, I made a ton of mistakes but I think I'll get better. The deck isn't easy to pilot.

In any case, I've been thinking were to take the deck from here, and wanted some opinions. The directions I'm thinking about are:
Blood Moon Jund, Moon is a beating against a lot of decks and we can often push it through t2 with Disruption, threats in Jund are not as nice as Abzan but still considerable.
Knight of the Reliquary along with a land package, probably with Crop Rotations and Thespian Depths.
Stoneforge Abzan, unsure if it can work, I've seen some of you try it out, but I'm not really convinced.
BUG something, Leovold is a heck of a card, a t2 Jace is a beating as well.

What do you think about those options, and in general of the list I used?
Thanks in advance :)

[Brael]

In any case, I've been thinking were to take the deck from here, and wanted some opinions. The directions I'm thinking about are:
Blood Moon Jund, Moon is a beating against a lot of decks and we can often push it through t2 with Disruption, threats in Jund are not as nice as Abzan but still considerable.
Knight of the Reliquary along with a land package, probably with Crop Rotations and Thespian Depths.
Stoneforge Abzan, unsure if it can work, I've seen some of you try it out, but I'm not really convinced.
BUG something, Leovold is a heck of a card, a t2 Jace is a beating as well.


I think Rhinos are the best positioned right now, so that's where you want to be. As for your ideas though:

Blood Moon is bad in this deck, Vet gives your opponent basics, and getting your own basics requires a Vet trigger anyways, it's just not worth it.

I've tried Knight of the Reliquary, as something of a compromise between Crop Rotation and Primeval Titan. I found it to be too slow. We don't have great enablers for it considering we're not a Wasteland deck and we have several excellent 3 drops already. Dark Depths is poorly positioned in the current meta.

Stoneforge has been played from time to time, but not to as great of success as you would imagine. Stoneforge is what I've been trying lately, with a somewhat different take on it (trying it with an SE style build). The deck is smooth when I goldfish, but untested. Sadly, my current living situation is going to leave me with little to no time to play Legacy this summer, so realistically I won't get any solid results with the deck until late August/early September unless I can find a weekend Legacy tournament within reasonable driving distance.

Leovold is a good card, but he's really just a 3 mana Baleful Strix. While he's not bad, he does lock you into BUG and I think Nic Fit simply has better options in either pure BG or Junk. Basically, I just don't think the shell he creates (cantrips, strix, etc...) is what we want to be doing with a Veteran/Explorer combination. That shell is built to minimize mana usage where as we want to maximize it.

[Yutao]

I think Rhinos are the best positioned right now, so that's where you want to be.

Leovold is a good card, but he's really just a 3 mana Baleful Strix. While he's not bad, he does lock you into BUG and I think Nic Fit simply has better options in either pure BG or Junk. Basically, I just don't think the shell he creates (cantrips, strix, etc...) is what we want to be doing with a Veteran/Explorer combination. That shell is built to minimize mana usage where as we want to maximize it.

Rhinos are great, unless in the mirror against Sneaky Fit, then the sorta stare Emmy in the face and cower.

Leovold's taxing ability is great against any form of Delver list, which our deck naturally preys upon. I haven't tested it against any form of uninteractive deck, but it should be pretty insane against Enchantress.

[Echelon]

Hello guys, new to Legacy here, I went to GP Bologna for side-events the last weekend and decided to make a Legacy deck for the funs of it, not much play here in Greece but it's still good to have a deck around. In any case, here is the list that I ran with, some budget restrictions and some cards-I-could-not-find restrictions in the manabase (Duals and Phyrexian Tower/Volrath's Stronghold respectively):

...List...

Some notes about the list (Disregard throw-together-cards-I-happened-to-have-there sideboard).
...
2) Rhinos are the bomb in fair matchups, but 3 is too many, I'd probably play 2.
...
6) Trackers did seem quite slow, I'm thinking of replacing them with something else.
7) Vindicate is quite quite useful, but as stated Pulse would probably be better.
...

Now, besides the list I went 2-2 and 3-split in the two legacy scheduled events. The matches were as follows (From memory):
Saturday event:

...

Match 4: UR Delver-Burn - WIN
Game 1: He plays a bunch of irrelevant creatures like Delver and Stormchaser Mage, I play Siege Rhinos. Win.
Game 2: I board in Kitchen FInks and Thragtusk, Cabal away his filtering, burry him in lifegain and win with huge creatures.

...

Overall I'm extremely happy with the games, especially for my first legacy tournament, I made a ton of mistakes but I think I'll get better. The deck isn't easy to pilot.

In any case, I've been thinking were to take the deck from here, and wanted some opinions. The directions I'm thinking about are:
Blood Moon Jund, Moon is a beating against a lot of decks and we can often push it through t2 with Disruption, threats in Jund are not as nice as Abzan but still considerable.
Knight of the Reliquary along with a land package, probably with Crop Rotations and Thespian Depths.
Stoneforge Abzan, unsure if it can work, I've seen some of you try it out, but I'm not really convinced.
BUG something, Leovold is a heck of a card, a t2 Jace is a beating as well.

What do you think about those options, and in general of the list I used?
Thanks in advance :)

First off, welcome to the club.

As for your 75 - I can recommend getting on-colour fetches (and perhaps run 10 of them so you can omit a few duals). Volrath's Stronghold is something you can live without, but does give the deck an extra boost. The Phyrexian Tower (or even 2, if you're brave) is a must. It gives you some much needed explosiveness.

Concerning your SB - to what end do you want to run Glissa? And Fracturing Gust kinda baffles me - it's expensive and doesn't do anything Pernicious Deed doesn't already do more cheaply.

On your points:
2) You can never have too many Rhinos. Ever. Going Rhino, Rhino, Rhino lets you get away with a lot of mucking about. Trust me, I know. I've won plenty of games I had no business of winning simply b/c my Rhinos decided to move as a herd.
6) Tracker might be slow, but it gives you inevitability. If your opponent can't answer it (in time), they will be either crushed by it or the cards it gives you. It's a bit of a sleeper threat, but a very potent one at that.
7) Vindicate can also take care of, say, Karakas, which can be pretty damn important if you want to go and answer D&T via Glissa (or if you decide you want to run a Meren), for instance. Or Tabernacle from Lands, etc. etc. I'd take Vindicate over Pulse any day.

On your match #4: There is no Kitchen Finks in your 75.

For now I'd stick w/ Junk Fit. It seems to be pretty well positioned. If you're unsure of where you want to go, first work on getting a set of Verdant Catacombs and a Phyrexian Tower - you'll be needing those regardless of what direction you want to take your deck.

[sdematt]

As far as "Cunning Wish" and Nic Fit BUG strategies are concerned, I'd say that I've tested a lot of "insta kill" cards:
- Empty the Pits is very nice (vs Midrange).
- Hatred (vs Combo) is maybe the best option (expensive but alpha strike nonetheless)
- Crypt incursion (vs Tempo) will give you enough time to take control of the game

My two cents :p

I think 2-of value wish could be interesting, but then you get into some deep sideboarding. I like it. Wish, untap, Tsabo's Decree you?

I feel like Bone Picker seems REALLY interesting. Same with Strix + Meren.

-Matt

[Secretly.A.Bee]

I feel like Bone Picker seems REALLY interesting.

-Matt

Yes! I'm almost done picking things up for a couple different nic fit styles and bone picker is something I intend to play around with.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

[Echelon]

Oh, before I forget - @Ricardio, I see that you're running 2 Kambal in your SB. Have you had any use for it yet?

[rubblekill]

You can never have too many Rhinos. Ever. Going Rhino, Rhino, Rhino lets you get away with a lot of mucking about. Trust me, I know. I've won plenty of games I had no business of winning simply b/c my Rhinos decided to move as a herd.

This has got to be a Ricardio level quote, right?

[Echelon]

This has got to be a Ricardio level quote, right?

:laugh:

[Bobmans]

Blood Moon is bad in this deck, Vet gives your opponent basics, and getting your own basics requires a Vet trigger anyways, it's just not worth it.

Blood Moon should only be there to battle Lands, although when i bring it, then i board it against greedy manabases as well.

And wow, is this thread picking up again. Luckily i can skip all the Blue BUG talk, cus screw Blue.

And i sooo wanna play 4* Rhino, but it always feels lackluster when i do. Then i read all this Rhino madness here, ARGH. Can't make my damn Mind up..

Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-G935F met Tapatalk

[Echelon]

And i sooo wanna play 4* Rhino, but it always feels lackluster when i do. Then i read all this Rhino madness here, ARGH. Can't make my damn Mind up..

Give in to the Rhino!

You know you want to!

[PanosIs]

First off, welcome to the club.

As for your 75 - I can recommend getting on-colour fetches (and perhaps run 10 of them so you can omit a few duals). Volrath's Stronghold is something you can live without, but does give the deck an extra boost. The Phyrexian Tower (or even 2, if you're brave) is a must. It gives you some much needed explosiveness.

Concerning your SB - to what end do you want to run Glissa? And Fracturing Gust kinda baffles me - it's expensive and doesn't do anything Pernicious Deed doesn't already do more cheaply.

On your points:
2) You can never have too many Rhinos. Ever. Going Rhino, Rhino, Rhino lets you get away with a lot of mucking about. Trust me, I know. I've won plenty of games I had no business of winning simply b/c my Rhinos decided to move as a herd.
6) Tracker might be slow, but it gives you inevitability. If your opponent can't answer it (in time), they will be either crushed by it or the cards it gives you. It's a bit of a sleeper threat, but a very potent one at that.
7) Vindicate can also take care of, say, Karakas, which can be pretty damn important if you want to go and answer D&T via Glissa (or if you decide you want to run a Meren), for instance. Or Tabernacle from Lands, etc. etc. I'd take Vindicate over Pulse any day.

On your match #4: There is no Kitchen Finks in your 75.

For now I'd stick w/ Junk Fit. It seems to be pretty well positioned. If you're unsure of where you want to go, first work on getting a set of Verdant Catacombs and a Phyrexian Tower - you'll be needing those regardless of what direction you want to take your deck.

I must have missed something in my decklist, maybe I was running 2 Lost Legacy or something like that.

The sideboard was thrown together with random cards from my commander binder, so yeah, Glissa is for Eldrazi in theory as she can fight and win against all of their threats.

On points:
2) Unsure how I feel about that, I think Rhinos have very swingy matchups in legacy, sometimes you play against a fair deck and crush them with 4/5s and sometimes you play Storm and they're irrelevant. Still felt 3 was too many over some more active threat/lockpiece.
6) I'll concede to that, in some testing games I was able to outpace a Jace in card advantage with Tracker, still unsure if there's not anything better for us to run.
7) I like Vindicate a lot more as a card, but I still think that without Meren there's not much reason to run it. Is Tabernacle a huge issue for us?

As to were to go from here, I'll probably stick with Junk indeed, I like having access to Path, Vindicate and Sigarda. Maybe I'll splash some blue for Atraxa, or I'll try the Knight road, I think we have a lot of space to try to implement more angles of attack in the Junk build, for now we're just hitting with Rhinos. My purchase schedule includes some EDH stuff into Aether Vials, Stoneforge and Jace for now, but when I have some free MTG budget I think I'll go for Phyrexian Tower and then save up for a Bayou and a Savannah, I really don't think Catacombs are necessary, like, I'd rather have one Bayou than 4 Catacombs, Foothills work just fine fetching all our colors.

[Echelon]

@PanosIs: Fetching basics is key to not get Wastelanded to hell. Don't forget that your deck is incredibly mana hungry. For this deck it really is better to have 4 Catacombs and an Overgrown Tomb than being forced to fetch a Bayou w/ your Wooded Foothills instead of a basic Swamp. I cannot stress this enough.

As for Tabernacle - it's just an example. You can also substitute it for a Dark Depths/Thespian's Stage/Grove of the Burnwillows/Glacial Chasm/Eye of Ugin/Gaea's Cradle/whatever floats your boat.

[Ralf]

I think 2-of value wish could be interesting, but then you get into some deep sideboarding. I like it. Wish, untap, Tsabo's Decree you?

I feel like Bone Picker seems REALLY interesting. Same with Strix + Meren.

-Matt

I've elected Consume the Meek instead, but well you get the idea !

[Brael]

@PanosIs: Fetching basics is key to not get Wastelanded to hell. Don't forget that your deck is incredibly mana hungry. For this deck it really is better to have 4 Catacombs and an Overgrown Tomb than being forced to fetch a Bayou w/ your Wooded Foothills instead of a basic Swamp. I cannot stress this enough.

This. The #1 way you lose games is to your mana being disrupted. Either you get Wastelanded, you draw too few, Vet gets stifled, etc. This is probably the #1 skill with the deck, knowing which way to develop your mana each game. Going around vs through Wastelands, playing into Ports, etc... the colors fetches get are important. Definitely 4 Catacomb before the first Bayou, even though Bayou is important.

[square_two]

I think 2-of value wish could be interesting, but then you get into some deep sideboarding. I like it. Wish, untap, Tsabo's Decree you?

I feel like Bone Picker seems REALLY interesting. Same with Strix + Meren.

-Matt

I'm tempted to try something like this for giggles. Doesn't really look like nic fit but it does look like it would just crush most creature-based decks.

3 Veteran Explorer
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Baleful Strix
4 Bone Picker
4 Tireless Tracker
1 Eternal Witness
1 Rhonas the Indomitable
1 Meren of Clan Nel Toth

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Fatal Push
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Collective Brutality
3 Pernicious Deed (or 2?)
3 Green Sun's Zenith

21 lands, 1 Stronghold

I do like the idea of Rhonas...not a bad manasink at all. Tap 6 mana, attack for 10 with Strix and Rhonas. Deck loses some flex tools (and arguably could trim on Brutality) without "big" permanent removal, but I just don't see this ever losing to Delver.

Also, don't understand the current hate on BUG Fit. Sure, I've sold my soul over to Brainstorm, but at least I'm consistent now and can find my sideboard cards :cool:

[Ricardio]

Always quad rhino! Haha
Kambal has been fine. He has to be dealt with immediately.

[Yutao]

Always quad rhino! Haha
Kambal has been fine. He has to be dealt with immediately.

Kambal has been a tad bit slow. Sure it's pretty dece against burn and storm, but it doesn't come down fast enough nor can you find it with GSZ. TBH if you're on junk fit, going rhino, rhino, thragtusk does a very good job against burn.

[MDHackbert]

I've enjoyed sideboard Kambal in Deadguy; he supplements other tools like CoBru. I would echo that in Nic Fit, where it sounds like he is acting more in a vacuum as a ringer against an archetype, without the ability to tutor him out, he feels much looser in that role. Would rather Rhino/Tusk. If burn is a large part of the meta where you are, Obstinate Baloth could also do work. Hell, even Finks isn't the worst.

[Ricardio]

Kambal has been a tad bit slow. Sure it's pretty dece against burn and storm, but it doesn't come down fast enough nor can you find it with GSZ. TBH if you're on junk fit, going rhino, rhino, thragtusk does a very good job against burn.


I've enjoyed sideboard Kambal in Deadguy; he supplements other tools like CoBru. I would echo that in Nic Fit, where it sounds like he is acting more in a vacuum as a ringer against an archetype, without the ability to tutor him out, he feels much looser in that role. Would rather Rhino/Tusk. If burn is a large part of the meta where you are, Obstinate Baloth could also do work. Hell, even Finks isn't the worst.

He is one more mana than I would like and he isn't green but he is a lock piece like canonist that punishes them for trying to find an answer as well. I do not think baloth or finks are worth slots nor are we in need of more life gain (see 4 rhino and thragtusk). The deck needs hate for combo. Game plan is hand hate into lock piece and ride rhino into the sunset while jamming out to your favorite song.

[Warden]

I'll join the recent discussion about Nic Fit ideas. Not sure if I'll be able to play my monthly this weekend or not.

@Rhino: Card is good. 4 may be too much IMO. I think 3 + a suite of Zeniths is sufficient for most metas. Like a good baseball player, Rhino shines when you give it "protection" in the batting order. On its own, Rhino doesn't win the game on its own. You need something for 3cc (Tracker, etc) and/or something for 5cc/6cc (Tusk, Titans) to make your board significantly better than the opponent's.

@Moon effects: These are really good. I don't see a conflict of interest with Vet and Magus/Blood Moons. You're going to benefit more than the opponent. When the table slants heavily in your favor, you profit. The interesting thing to point out is the sheer amount of fetchlands in top 8 lists right now. Shit, even DnT is experimenting with splashes in addition to their plethora of utility lands.

@Abrupt Decay: This is commentary on a discussion several pages back. I think this card is the reason to run BG in the format (deathrite is not strictly BG so I don't consider him in the BG discussion). Counterbalance is out, but low cc permanents are in.


...And wow, is this thread picking up again. Luckily i can skip all the Blue BUG talk, cus screw Blue.


My man.

@Reani-fit: Tinkered with this for a while and concluded it's just worse than Sneaky Fit. You need conditionals that, as a whole, are harder to establish in the meta than [big stupid in your hand + sneak attack on table + red mana open]. I tried making Reanimator featuring Nic Fit and Nic Fit featuring Reanimator and it just didn't work.

4 Vet
1 Sakura
1 Witness
1 Meren
2 Tracker
1 Thragtusk
1 GraveTime
2 Reanimator Targets
2 Zenith
/14

3 Deed
3 Decay
/6

4 Therapy
8 Reanimation Effects
8 Put Stuff in the Grave Effects
- (b) Entomb, Buried Alive, Thoughtseize, Collective Brutality, Liliana of the Veil
- (bg) Grisly Salvage
- (g) Fauna Shaman, Commune with the Gods, Wild Mongrel
- (r) Faithless Looting, Firestorm
/20

20 Lands

I still can't wrap my head around how to assemble this deck. I'm pretty sure you'd want 14-16 Nic Fit pieces...although what you exactly run is beyond the scope of what I can figure out. Running the usual suspects like Tracker/Rhino/Tusk is actually tough because Reani-Fit only has 20 lands.

*I seriously looked at The Mimeoplasm. (GSZ) + Buried Alive + Mimeo creates an interesting line of play. Perhaps there's something there I couldn't see.
*Nec. Ooze combo also has potential, but you kinda want the blue filters more than Nic Fit around him.
*Red has the best raw power. Faithless Looting is actually just a sweet card for Nic Fit in general. It's easy to pay for and has flashback to continue filtering. It rarely disrupts Jund Fit's natural gameplan. Red also gives us Firestorm, which dumps stupids into the 'yard as it boardwipes. JUND also gives us the natural ability to play Slaughter Games (never a bad thing).
*Blue was tempting, but ultimately you're running a very weak UB reanimator deck. Body Double isn't enough. Strix doesn't fit the gameplan (even a slow one built on Rec. Nightmare). Gifts/Intuition assemble a worse sneak attack deck. The one upside was Show and Tell-Fit, but I cannot find that to be a better deck than Sneak/Show.
*White has the most flexibility for a Nic Fit shell IMO. Karmic Guide is straight value regardless of a finisher in the yard. Salvage plays nice with Unburial. The option of Sun Titan has an upside of Animate Dead making the list. Reanimate Sun Titan -> grab AD -> grab another guy. There's potential to run Junk-Fit and insert Karmic Guides.

I didn't think about Hulk combos. MrIggins tickles my brain on the Mikaeus/Ballista thing. How would you build around those two?

[pettdan]

@Warden:
Below you'll find my latest BUG Fit Reanimator list. I played it last week going 2-1-1 in the local weekly event. The lost match was 1-2 and both losses were to Winter Orb. Still figuring that card out, already have answers so maybe being aware of it will help. I think boarding in FoWs may be ok. Last time I played the deck, maybe last September, I had a similar result.

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?31293-Primer-Nic-Fit&p=1005288&viewfull=1#post1005288
[edit: Actually now with -1 Maelstrom Pulse, +1 Ponder which I'll change into +1 Liliana of the Veil. Also sideboard +2 Invasive Surgery, +1 Fatal Push, -1 Toxic Deluge, -1 Back to Basics, -1 Ensnaring Bridge. I'm considering To the Slaughter over Edict and Eternal Witness over one Snapcaster since it's GSZ-able, but I think Snapcaster is preferable.]

Basically the list I play is using the Reanimation package as a value package (could have been Unearth) but occasionally doing broken things and offering quick combo interaction through Entomb + Reanimate Glenn Elendra.The anti-combo package is pretty good for a Nic Fit maindeck with Entomb acting as extra discard (flashback Therapy), GSZ for Leovold stopping cantrips, Liliana for extra discard and monster-removal, Jace fatesealing, Glenn Elendra providing softlock and Reanimate extending it, Strixes and Snappys offering Therapy-flashback to avoid ramping the opponent, and Collective Brutality for extra discard. It's very nice to have all these options in the maindeck. The sideboard offers very good alternatives with Invasive Surgery very easily reaching Delirium thanks to Strixes and cantrips, and there's FoW and Flusterstorm and Snappy doubles up on them and Surgical too.

On the value side of things having access to 3-9 Strixes (Reanimate + Snapcaster) or similarly 3-7 Leovolds (strange counting here but I include the GSZ's in the lower amount), Snapcasters doubling up on removal and Jace + Liliana that work well with Strixes, Deeds and the removal + Snappys. All these nice things in a list with proper filtering seems very worthy of testing to me. It lacks the linearity and strength of Rhinos with lots of removal or Sneak + monster and it can take some time to close out games. Maybe I just need to learn it better, but I doubt the list I tried is optimal. Would be nice if someone else would try it, it's lots of fun.

And then there are the strong plays of t2 reanimated Grave Titan or the Veteran ramp into Jace t2. I left a more fancy list with e.g. Griselbrand and moved to a list that puts less focus on the monsters. Both Grave Titan, Thragtusk and Glenn Elendra are castable, don't even need have to ramp into them but if we're ramping it's pretty nice to be able to Reanimate a Veteran in case of Stifle or FoW.

[Yutao]

I guess you need a sac outlet for Mike+Ballista to go off? I'm not sure about running a 3 card combo tho.

[Bobmans]

Not to fully dismiss the reanimate NicFit variant, but doesn't Sneak Attack already doing what reanimate NicFit wants to do with less cards and less hate? For Sneak Attack we dodge the graveyard. Plus isn't Pattern of Rebirth not a better alternative to drop huge Bombs like Progenitus, Emrakul or Worldspine Wurm?
Again, My concern on Reanimator is that it requires more cards and is easier to hate.

Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-G935F met Tapatalk

[Echelon]

If burn is a large part of the meta where you are, Obstinate Baloth could also do work. Hell, even Finks isn't the worst.

How about a maindeck w/ multiple DRS, a Scavenging Ooze, Courser of Kruphix and 4 Rhinos..? Works just fine, I can tell you.


I'll join the recent discussion about Nic Fit ideas. Not sure if I'll be able to play my monthly this weekend or not.

@Rhino: Card is good. 4 may be too much IMO. I think 3 + a suite of Zeniths is sufficient for most metas. Like a good baseball player, Rhino shines when you give it "protection" in the batting order. On its own, Rhino doesn't win the game on its own. You need something for 3cc (Tracker, etc) and/or something for 5cc/6cc (Tusk, Titans) to make your board significantly better than the opponent's.

...

@Abrupt Decay: This is commentary on a discussion several pages back. I think this card is the reason to run BG in the format (deathrite is not strictly BG so I don't consider him in the BG discussion). Counterbalance is out, but low cc permanents are in.

Sigarda is enough, 6-drops are just overkill.

On AD: What CMC <= 3 non-land permanents are there that we can't answer w/ other, cheaper (or GSZ-able) tools..? I don't think Nic Fit has much need for AD at this particular moment.


Not to fully dismiss the reanimate NicFit variant, but doesn't Sneak Attack already doing what reanimate NicFit wants to do with less cards and less hate? For Sneak Attack we dodge the graveyard. Plus isn't Pattern of Rebirth not a better alternative to drop huge Bombs like Progenitus, Emrakul or Worldspine Wurm?
Again, My concern on Reanimator is that it requires more cards and is easier to hate.

You cast your Pattern of Rebirth, targeting your little creature. Opponent: Bolt your creature (or whatever other removal). Thank you for the 2-for-1. And then there's Stifle. I've dabbled with it long enough to know that Summoner's Egg is the better option, and that also isn't Legacy-viable.

[pettdan]

Not to fully dismiss the reanimate NicFit variant, but doesn't Sneak Attack already doing what reanimate NicFit wants to do with less cards and less hate? For Sneak Attack we dodge the graveyard. Plus isn't Pattern of Rebirth not a better alternative to drop huge Bombs like Progenitus, Emrakul or Worldspine Wurm?
Again, My concern on Reanimator is that it requires more cards and is easier to hate.

Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-G935F met Tapatalk


I actually changed to the Sneaky Fit list when it appeared and stopped working on the Reanimator version, I also think Sneaky Fit may be more powerful. I'm not trying to maximize power with the reanimator list, rather synergy, smoothness, efficiency, while keeping an unfair element - I think. And now with SDT gone I'd rather go back to a list with good card filtering rather than starting experiments on how to replace SDT (that will be for later).

The advantage of the BUG Reanimator list, I think, is that:
a) you have good card filtering with Brainstorms + Snapcasters and Strixes and even a Ponder or two - which is known to be very valuable for a deck in this format,
b) you can board into or even maindeck counterspells and even reach delirium for Invasive Surgery, providing perhaps(!) a more consistent combo plan than most Nic Fit versions (very much up to proving, I guess),
c) maindeck Glenn Elendra who is good value in fair matchups, blocking Marit Lage and Delvers well and above all providing soft lock vs combo,
d) potential to tutor for and reanimate Glenn Elendra from turn two with blue mana open, which is a pretty good move [edit: in combo matchups],
e) strixes are sweet vs fair decks, obviously, just play the cantripping roadblock and dig further into your deck for the next land you're missing or whatever, and then you reanimate the Strix or Veteran or Snapcaster to double up on removal or whatever crucial aspect of the Nic Fit strategy you find yourself in current need of - the deck has a solid (or well, I'm testing it) fair game plan, [edit: include here the planeswalker + deed synergy]
f) the possibility of Reanimating a Grave Titan (or whatever you choose to play), this is not the main plan just a good option to have that will give some easy wins. [edit: It's also highly possible to ramp into the Grave Titan Nic Fit style, hence you're not depending on the reanimation strategy]

So to conclude there is maindeck combo interaction for little mana, there is card selection and there is a stable fair plan with the potential to do kind of unfair stuff. I started with a more unfair game plan but I didn't like the clunkiness.

The graveyard interaction isn't, I think, a weakness of this list. Rather it may be an advantage. I tend to board out parts of the small reanimation package, if opponents bring in gravehate that opens up for the fair planeswalker+bridge plan.

Let me in response ask what Sneaky Fit does that BUG Reanimator wants to do (i.e. points a-e above)? Not saying that BUG Reanimator Fit is a better deck, but it has some advantages that I appreciate.

[LVA]

On AD: What CMC <= 3 non-land permanents are there that we can't answer w/ other, cheaper (or GSZ-able) tools..? I don't think Nic Fit has much need for AD at this particular moment.

Killing delver is still a thing. Having an uncounterable way to get rid of a problem permanent in a format with a ton of cheaper counters is still pretty useful.

[Echelon]

Killing delver is still a thing. Having an uncounterable way to get rid of a problem permanent in a format with a ton of cheaper counters is still pretty useful.

@AD mana available, PtE/Fatal Push has "can't be Dazed", meaning your opponent'll have to 2-for-1 himself w/ a FoW if they're to protect their Delver. I don't know about you, but getting my opponent to 2-for-1 themselves so they can stop my 1 mana card is perfectly fine by me. It also means they're less likely to have the FoW when they really need it, and, at least w/ Junk Fit, I'm perfectly fine with spending some life points (by getting Delver'd in the face) to accomplish that.

This deck plans to ignore Daze/Wasteland and overload your opponents' FoW :smile:. Gives their deck 8 dead cards and only 4 get-out-of-jail-free cards vs. all your stuff.

[LVA]

@AD mana available, PtE/Fatal Push has "can't be Dazed", meaning your opponent'll have to 2-for-1 himself w/ a FoW if they're to protect their Delver. I don't know about you, but getting my opponent to 2-for-1 themselves so they can stop my 1 mana card is perfectly fine by me. It also means they're less likely to have the FoW when they really need it, and, at least w/ Junk Fit, I'm perfectly fine with spending some life points (by getting Delver'd in the face) to accomplish that.

This deck plans to ignore Daze/Wasteland and overload your opponents' FoW :smile:. Gives their deck 8 dead cards and only 4 get-out-of-jail-free cards vs. all your stuff.

Cards like food chain also exist, so having a no-nonsense way to kill that is non-trivial. More importantly with bant deathblade doing pretty well online being able to destroy the equipment is a big deal. SFM decks can go long, but without a jitte or sword of x and y their creatures are kind of unimpressive, at least compared to ours, so being able to win that battle is pretty significant in that match up.

Oh and death and taxes.

[Echelon]

Cards like food chain also exist, so having a no-nonsense way to kill that is non-trivial. More importantly with bant deathblade doing pretty well online being able to destroy the equipment is a big deal. SFM decks can go long, but without a jitte or sword of x and y their creatures are kind of unimpressive, at least compared to ours, so being able to win that battle is pretty significant in that match up.

Oh and death and taxes.

So... PtE, Pernicious Deed & Qasali Pridemage?

What else you got?

[LVA]

So... PtE, Pernicious Deed & Qasali Pridemage?

What else you got?

Relying too much on deed can be a bit of a risky proposition, especially against something like d&t. Decay is just a flexible removal spell, which is never bad. If you want to cut it go ahead, I'm sure you have your reasoning, but having something more versatile than path/swords/push can be pretty helpful at times, so I'd rather run it just because of that.

[Echelon]

Relying too much on deed can be a bit of a risky proposition, especially against something like d&t. Decay is just a flexible removal spell, which is never bad. If you want to cut it go ahead, I'm sure you have your reasoning, but having something more versatile than path/swords/push can be pretty helpful at times, so I'd rather run it just because of that.

Yup, I've been doing without for a long time, running 4 PtE and a QPM instead and have been doing just fine.

My point though is that even though AD is a versatile card, a) you don't really need the versatility and b) it isn't that versatile that you lose anything when you don't run it, especially now Miracles is gone. I'm just trying to make people think here. It's often considered an auto-include without any reasoning while, with some reasoning, you can conclude you can omit it in favor of faster or GSZ'able cards, improving both the speed and consistency of your deck. Many roads lead to Rome, and all that.

As for D&T - it's one of my regular training buddies. The MU is fine, especially when you bring in Golgari Charms for G2/3.

[Whitefaces]

Fwiw I play a lot of Grixis Delver and I'm very glad to see less Abrupt Decays. The uncounterable clause is a lot more relevant than you think. We need to be hyper aggressive as your late game is so good, so I'll FoW stuff like PtE and Push on a Delver most of the time (ofc game state dependent). Stifle on Vet triggers can keep things like Piece live too.

[Echelon]

Fwiw I play a lot of Grixis Delver and I'm very glad to see less Abrupt Decays. The uncounterable clause is a lot more relevant than you think. We need to be hyper aggressive as your late game is so good, so I'll FoW stuff like PtE and Push on a Delver most of the time (ofc game state dependent). Stifle on Vet triggers can keep things like Piece live too.

Grixis Delver is my sparring partner's other deck :wink:.

Stifle is how I tend to fall most often, denying my deck the mana it craves. AD doesn't do much to prevent that. I just have to keep making those land drops so I can get to the late game before Grixis' creatures get there. Heck, often enough I'll try to go and GSZ for Dryad Arbor on my T1 to help break through the mana denial.

[Whitefaces]

Grixis Delver is my sparring partner's other deck :wink:.

Stifle is how I tend to fall most often, denying my deck the mana it craves. AD doesn't do much to prevent that. I just have to keep making those land drops so I can get to the late game before Grixis' creatures get there. Heck, often enough I'll try to go and GSZ for Dryad Arbor on my T1 to help break through the mana denial.

AD does solve the mana problems to an extent. If you're stuck on just a few lands, regardless of whether you can cast W/B for PtE/Push with mana up to pay for Daze, the Delver player has the option to counter it. If you're low on mana you're going to need further time to set up.

The point I'm trying to make is that Delver is willing to trade cards for damage aggressively vs Nic Fit, especially since Therapy can clear the way of FoW to resolve bombs later anyway so I will snap it off if I can. Decay doesn't give that option. I mean, did you really just play Decay for Counterbalance before? In the deck that has a high enough curve to not care about it most of the time?

[Echelon]

I mean, did you really just play Decay for Counterbalance before? In the deck that has a high enough curve to not care about it most of the time?

I'll let you in on a little secret... I've never run Decay at all, not even for Counterbalance.

Counterbalance wasn't the problem (courtesy of GSZ), the fact that they could easily answer all of our creatures (including Sigarda) was.

I like both the lower curve and the fact that it keeps my green mana free. My manabase is also a land smaller than most (just 21 lands) and I only run 6 basics (2 each), so my green mana gets pressured to hell for most of the game. Not running AD helps relieve that.

[Ganfar]

I'll let you in on a little secret... I've never run Decay at all, not even for Counterbalance.

Counterbalance wasn't the problem (courtesy of GSZ), the fact that they could easily answer all of our creatures (including Sigarda) was.

I like both the lower curve and the fact that it keeps my green mana free. My manabase is also a land smaller than most (just 21 lands) and I only run 6 basics (2 each), so my green mana gets pressured to hell for most of the game. Not running AD helps relieve that.

When I tried your list in my meta, I always miss AD. Especaily when I meet Counterbalance.

But now that is out of the way, we can use Fatal Push instead.

[Echelon]

When I tried your list in my meta, I always miss AD. Especaily when I meet Counterbalance.

But now that is out of the way, we can use Fatal Push instead.

Hey, to me that reads "Your list might be viable in the new meta", so that's cool.

[Ricardio]

I never enter a legacy event without abrupt decays. Uncounterable and kills lily all at the discounted rate of BG.
I play 3, had four but felt like too many. I don't like push at all. We have primo removal.

[509]

Hey guys, long time lurker here.
I always thought Nic Fit was the sweetest deck in legacy and have tested various versions on cockatrice/xmage over the years but couldn't get myself to buy in with the miracles matchup being so bad. Now that that's out of the way...

Personal thoughts:

I think BUG might be where you want to be since

BUG has the best card selection, I think other versions will just be too inconsistent without top (some more than others).
BUG has the best combo matchup, and fast combo is big right now.
Leovold has been a pretty sweet addition to the deck imo, since it's a great value card while at the same time having a relevant ability against many combo decks.

With that being said:

I think you definitely want to run 4x GSZ in BUG, I've encountered several people trying Planeswalker builds etc with no or few copies but the card is simply too good. Early game all you want is to get an Explorer into play and GSZ does that. After that all you want is to get a fatty into play and GSZ does that. And yes, you pay 1 more but after Explorer you can probably afford it. The card just makes the deck consistent. Don't cut/shave it. This obv. means you have to run a high(ish) amount of creatures but I don't think that's an issue since miracles is gone.
I think FoW is good. (Not everyone runs it in BUG from what I've seen.) Against combo it's obviously great but even against fair decks it helps you not get stifled/keeps you up in tempo early game while becoming perfectly castable late game since we're kind of a ramp deck anyways.


With that said, here's what I've been running all afternoon on Xmage, currently undefeated even against what I thought would be some tough matchups (Turbo Depths, ANT):


// 60 Maindeck
// 15 Creature
4 Veteran Explorer
1 Leovold, Emissary of Trest
3 Tireless Tracker
3 Baleful Strix
1 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Gaddock Teeg

// 17 Instant/Sorcery
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Ponder

// 6 Other Permanent
3 Pernicious Deed
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Nissa, Steward of Elements

// 22 Land
2 Swamp
2 Island
2 Forest
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
1 Phyrexian Tower

// 15 Sideboard
SB: 1 Reclamation Sage
SB: 4 Leyline of the Void
SB: 1 Back to Basics
SB: 2 Dread of Night
SB: 2 Mindbreak Trap
SB: 1 Golgari Charm
SB: 1 Nissa, Vital Force
SB: 2 Thoughtseize
SB: 1 Toxic Deluge

Some thoughts after testing:

Nissa, Steward of Elements has been extremely slow and will get the axe. She might be better in a more creature focused deck but as stated above I don't think that's where you want to be.
Jace is great.
The Mindbreak Traps are probably overkill, Storm seemed fairly easy post board, something less narrow like another Thoughtseize sounds good to me.
I tried Titania when testing solo yesterday (first thing I do with a "new" deck is play a bunch of games on Cockatrice by myself against a gauntlet of strong decks) and she was underwhelming. I love her in some other decks (been testing some green loam/stompy brew last week, she was great there) but without wasteland there were too many times she just came down as a vanilla 5/3 with an enemy DRS eating her land. I'm currently trying more Trackers and an Oboro wich has been sweet so far. Will keep testing.
I probably need more lifegain somewhere. Not yet sure what to add and where though (MD Thragtusk? SB Baloth/Finks?). Hasn't been a problem yet but it's bound to be at some point.
I put a Ghost Quarter main as a solution to problematic lands (mostly Dark Depths) as well as to potentially combo it with Nissa, VF/Tracker. While it did help me win a match against Turbo Depths (along with Strix blocking and Jace bouncing 20/20s) I think Karakas might be better in that slot. Also makes Teeg more castable.
Rec Sage is a card I always have in my initial drafts of GSZ decks but usually cut after a while because I never side it in. Might happen here too.
Currently on 0 AD which has nothing to do with the current discussion (which I only just read). I just needed slots and decided to try to go down to 0 because we have Deed anyways. Might add a copy or two if I find room but I haven't missed it yet.


I guess with that in mind this will be my list going forward:


// 60 Maindeck
// 16 Creature
4 Veteran Explorer
1 Courser of Kruphix //might not be here to stay, could be AD or something
1 Leovold, Emissary of Trest
3 Tireless Tracker
3 Baleful Strix
1 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Gaddock Teeg

// 17 Instant/Sorcery
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Ponder

// 5 Other Permanent
3 Pernicious Deed
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

// 22 Land
2 Swamp
2 Island
2 Forest
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
1 Karakas
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
1 Phyrexian Tower

// 15 Sideboard
SB: 1 Obstinate Baloth
SB: 4 Leyline of the Void
SB: 2 Back to Basics
SB: 2 Dread of Night
SB: 1 Golgari Charm
SB: 1 Nissa, Vital Force
SB: 3 Thoughtseize
SB: 1 Toxic Deluge

I think something like this should be strong in the current meta.
Miracles is gone, as such there aren't many decks that play a ton of basics which is great because it benefits us directly (we don't give everyone free lands with Explorer) as well as indirectly (we are one of the few decks that doesn't care that much about the rising amount of non-basic land hate). Terminus is gone and StP is down in numbers which is great for us. The combo matchups are mostly fine because of FoW. Stifle is annoying but at least this version can try to force it. Fair decks are mostly good matchups, Loam is currently on the rise and a great matchup for probably all Nic Fit variants. I'm hoping Nic Fit is actually a good deck now. Will keep testing.

~509

[square_two]

509 you mention requiring a full playset of GSZ in BUG, but your topend is...3 Trackers, Leovold and a Meren? That seems underwhelming considering your arguments for including so many. I'm about to finish up my 5th league with BUG online and I have a higher topend (including a Titania, also Nissa VF as a noncreature) with less GSZ.

I'm surprised by the complete lack of single target removal, that seems odd to me. Seems like you'll just be auto-dead to Delver if your first Deed gets countered (if you find it in time). Heck I have a full playset of Strix and they are not guarantees that you won't die to the bug - my strixes usually immediately die to a bolt, push, or decay if my opp has the 3/2 out. The only downside to Push that I've found is Chalice. (Having more removal means that Titania doesn't have to be negated by an opp's single DRS btw...)

Personally I'm still not going to include FoW, especially not in the maindeck. How does FoW keep you up-tempo against fair decks? You are always losing two cards to their one if you play it early. Sure we can hardcast it later, but it's not a big deal considering that you usually don't have the mana to both play out a significant threat + hold up hardcast mode. Again, having some more removal means that you can use 1 Push or Decay against an opponent's...say, Knight of the Reliquary, instead of losing two cards. Something like C Brutality ups your flexibility as well (and game against combo).

Glad you are playing and testing the deck, we could always use more people trying things out. IMO the best parts of blue that you gain with BUG fit are Brainstorm, Strix, and Jace. Anything else is just gravy.

[509]

509 you mention requiring a full playset of GSZ in BUG, but your topend is...3 Trackers, Leovold and a Meren? That seems underwhelming considering your arguments for including so many. I'm about to finish up my 5th league with BUG online and I have a higher topend (including a Titania, also Nissa VF as a noncreature) with less GSZ.
Hmm, even as I was writing it I was debating what I wanted to say exactly so let me put it differently (and I know this isn't the same statement, my bad):
I think GSZ is good. Great even. I think lists like that of McDarby that forgo it completely are making a mistake as they won't find their Explorer reliably. It might, however be right, to shave one, maybe even two, though that seems really low to me. Overall what I'm trying to say is I think you should still try to be a GSZ deck. For now I'm playing 4 as I think it's great at any stage of the game.
Titania has been somewhat lackluster for me even though I love the card.
Nissa VF has impressed me a lot and I'm debating moving her to the main deck. In that case, yes, maybe even cutting a GSZ for it could be right.
Keep in mind that sometimes searching up a Tracker and playing a fetch immediately can be more impactful than playing all your lands, GSZ for Titania and getting your fetch DRS'd. I'm also playing a Oboro so I'm hoping the topend will be enough. So far it has been though it's somewhat experimental for me.


I'm surprised by the complete lack of single target removal, that seems odd to me. Seems like you'll just be auto-dead to Delver if your first Deed gets countered (if you find it in time). Heck I have a full playset of Strix and they are not guarantees that you won't die to the bug - my strixes usually immediately die to a bolt, push, or decay if my opp has the 3/2 out. The only downside to Push that I've found is Chalice. (Having more removal means that Titania doesn't have to be negated by an opp's single DRS btw...)
I agree that it's odd and I was testing with 62 until yesterday and my last 2 cuts were AD so I'm not saying I'm sure on this at all but I'm trying it for now.


Personally I'm still not going to include FoW, especially not in the maindeck. How does FoW keep you up-tempo against fair decks? You are always losing two cards to their one if you play it early.
Might not always be great but that is still tempo though. You will fall behind but you have to hope to make it up with Deed/Deluge. Currently 2-1 vs Delver and the only match I lost I mulliganed to a questionable 5 and got Hymn'd twice. Not saying the matchup is great but it's been fine for me so far, we'll see.

Sure we can hardcast it later, but it's not a big deal considering that you usually don't have the mana to both play out a significant threat + hold up hardcast mode. Again, having some more removal means that you can use 1 Push or Decay against an opponent's...say, Knight of the Reliquary, instead of losing two cards. Something like C Brutality ups your flexibility as well (and game against combo).
There've been a lot of cases in my testing where I didn't have a big creature to cast or I had a few clues lying around against big red and could hold up force, then crack the clues end step. Also with Jace out you are often fine with 2-for-1ing yourself.



Glad you are playing and testing the deck, we could always use more people trying things out. IMO the best parts of blue that you gain with BUG fit are Brainstorm, Strix, and Jace. Anything else is just gravy.
Thanks a ton for your input. I'll definitely keep trying things out as far as removal and threats are concerned. For now I'll stick with the forces and see how that goes though.

E: Courser's ass. :/ Titania back in.

[Yutao]

I'll let you in on a little secret... I've never run Decay at all, not even for Counterbalance.

You utter madman!

[Echelon]

You utter madman!

Does this really surprise you (or anyone, for that matter)..? Lol

[Ricardio]

Does this really surprise you (or anyone, for that matter)..? Lol

Honestly? No. You are more man than me.

[Brael]

Honestly? No. You are more man than me.

I am all that is man. I'm up to playing 23 real lands (none of that Maze of Ith cheating).

[Ivan-784]

I am all that is man. I'm up to playing 23 real lands (none of that Maze of Ith cheating).

Going on 23 too. I used to run 24 but that's really too much. I cut the singleton Grave Time for a 2nd Tracker. The woodland lady impressed me a lot

[Bobmans]

The woodland lady impressed me a lot

Not really sure what card your taking about.
23 lands on a 60 build feels really. As much as Tracker can be a powerhouse mid/late i think one is sufficient. Between Nissa, Tracker, Witness and Courser, the 3cmc spots are clogged.

[Ivan-784]

Not really sure what card your taking about.
23 lands on a 60 build feels really. As much as Tracker can be a powerhouse mid/late i think one is sufficient. Between Nissa, Tracker, Witness and Courser, the 3cmc spots are clogged.

I am talking about Tracker. Found her very useful against midrange decks.

Made some changes to the list. Here's what I will bring tomorrow at the tournament:

4x Vet Ex
1x DRS
1x ScOoze
1x Gaddock
1x STEve
1x Witness
1x Couser
1x Nissa, Vastwood Seer
2x Tracker
1x Meren of Clan Nel Toth (yes, she seems pretty cute. Swapped Rec Nightmare for her)
1x Siege Rhino
1x Thrag
1x Sigarda
1x Dragonlord Dromoka
1x Prime Time

3x GSZ
3x Abrupt Decay
2x Deeds
1x Deluge
3x PTE
4x Cabal Therapy
1x Sylvan Library
1x Crop Rotation

4x Verdant Catacombs
4x Windswept Heath
3x Bayou
1x Savannah
1x Scrubland
3x Forest
2x Swamp
2x Plains
1x Karakas
1x Stronghold
1x Tower

SB:
1x Golgari charm
1x Rec Sage
1x Ashen Rider
2x Krosan Grip
2x Thoughtseize
4x Lost Legacy
4x Surgical

Upped Decay count to 3, because of the many delver decks: slow hands are a serious issue against them, so I think this is a good choice.
I cut the Grave Titan to put in something more agile: 2 six mana drops plus Sigarda are enough, I guess.

[Ganfar]

1x Meren of Clan Nel Toth (yes, she seems pretty cute. Swapped Rec Nightmare for her)


Meren is the real deal aganist orher midrange decks. BUG have a hard time to kill her and you return your best creture to your hand.

[Ivan-784]

Meren is the real deal aganist orher midrange decks. BUG have a hard time to kill her and you return your best creture to your hand.

Indeed. But you have to kill every enemy DRS: another reason to run 3 decays.

I'd like to test Nissa VF in my 75 cards, but I reaally don't know what to cut. Actual card choice seems to be really consistent for my meta

[Warden]

I'd cut that rotation in a heartbeat for nissa

[Brael]

Going on 23 too. I used to run 24 but that's really too much. I cut the singleton Grave Time for a 2nd Tracker. The woodland lady impressed me a lot

If I could figure out a cut I would play 24. I think 24 is the right number, since GSZ can also help with mana acceleration. Keep in mind that I am utterly crazy on land counts though, I play 26 lands in Burn.

I'm currently bouncing between Rhinos and SFM. Rhinos seem better positioned but SFM seems fun.


I'd cut that rotation in a heartbeat for nissa

Without Miracles around, I like Nissa a lot less. The fact that it's usually my top end and I can't GSZ for it, is a big deal. I was up to playing 2 Nissa in my last build where Miracles was in the format, but I've since cut it.


Indeed. But you have to kill every enemy DRS: another reason to run 3 decays.

This is part of the reason I would run the full 4 DRS between MB and SB. You don't have to kill every one, all you need is your own DRS to counter theirs. At the end of their turn, eat a spell, if they counter you they can't eat Meren's target. If they don't counter, you get free damage.

----------------------------
Edit: Second guessing the Oboro+Tracker plan. Oboro might just be better as a 9th fetch. A fetch generates two Tracker triggers already, the only advantage Oboro offers is the life in exchange for being colorless. I need to think about it further. I'm really liking my SFM build which leverages 4 Trackers though. The deck just never runs out of cards, yet it's always using all of it's mana.

This is what I've been playing
Land (23)

2x Bayou
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Dryad Arbor
2x Forest
1x Karakas
1x Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
1x Phyrexian Tower
2x Plains
1x Savannah
1x Scrubland
1x Swamp
4x Verdant Catacombs
1x Volrath's Stronghold
4x Windswept Heath

Creature (18)

4x Dark Confidant
2x Deathrite Shaman
4x Stoneforge Mystic
4x Tireless Tracker
4x Veteran Explorer

Artifact (3)

1x Batterskull
1x Sword of Fire and Ice
1x Umezawa's Jitte

Sorcery (10)

4x Cabal Therapy
4x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Maelstrom Pulse
1x Toxic Deluge

Instant (6)

2x Abrupt Decay
2x Crop Rotation
2x Path to Exile

Enchantment (1)

1x Pernicious Deed

And the Rhino build I've also been looking at
Land 23
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Windswept Heath
2 Bayou
1 Savanah
1 Scrubland
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Plains
2 Phyrexian Tower
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Karakas

Creature 18
4 Veteran Explorer
2 Deathrite Shaman
3 Dark Confidant
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Courser of Kruphix
1 Eternal Witness
2 Tireless Tracker
3 Siege Rhino
1 Thragtusk

Spells 20
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Crop Rotation
3 Path to Exile
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Sylvan Library
1 Vindicate
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Pernicious Deed

[Arianrhod]

Top 8'd at Mythic's 32-man (6 rounds) today. Full report to come, but for the quick touch-in:

R1: Food Chain - loss
R2: bye - win
R3: Merfolk - win
R4: RG Lands - win
R5: Tezzerator - win
R6: Esperblade - win (got paired down and had to play it out)

3rd in standings going into top 8.

Top 8: RUG Lands - loss

Briefly, I flooded vs Food Chain g1 -- drew like 3 Sneaks and no monsters, Zeniths, Deed, draw spells, tutors, nothing. Just lands and sneaks. G2 he forces my t3 Sneak and then untaps into Food Chain + Griffin + Ballista and kills me. Vs RUG Lands in the top 8 my deck just flatly imploded. I mulled to 6 both games, and never drew a land beyond my opening hand in either game (technically I did in g1 because it took him 10 years to kill me, but through Loam/Waste and Ports, it took way too long for me to get to any real mana count after like turn 6). Feeling mildly irritated about the top 8 loss because I basically didn't get to play and I felt ready for the matchup, but, meh.

I'll give a somewhat expanded version with more notes and my thoughts/list/changes to make later.

[tescrin]

I never enter a legacy event without abrupt decays. Uncounterable and kills lily all at the discounted rate of BG.
I play 3, had four but felt like too many. I don't like push at all. We have primo removal.

Spending a card to kill Liliana is usually CDA unless they both had a hand and you had an empty boardstate. If you have to discard it to her +1, sure, kill her. But otherwise Lingering Souls (or similar) are much better answers.

[Warden]

Top 8'd at Mythic's 32-man (6 rounds) today. Full report to come, but for the quick touch-in:

R1: Food Chain - loss
R2: bye - win
R3: Merfolk - win
R4: RG Lands - win
R5: Tezzerator - win
R6: Esperblade - win (got paired down and had to play it out)

3rd in standings going into top 8.

Top 8: RUG Lands - loss

Briefly, I flooded vs Food Chain g1 -- drew like 3 Sneaks and no monsters, Zeniths, Deed, draw spells, tutors, nothing. Just lands and sneaks. G2 he forces my t3 Sneak and then untaps into Food Chain + Griffin + Ballista and kills me. Vs RUG Lands in the top 8 my deck just flatly imploded. I mulled to 6 both games, and never drew a land beyond my opening hand in either game (technically I did in g1 because it took him 10 years to kill me, but through Loam/Waste and Ports, it took way too long for me to get to any real mana count after like turn 6). Feeling mildly irritated about the top 8 loss because I basically didn't get to play and I felt ready for the matchup, but, meh.

I'll give a somewhat expanded version with more notes and my thoughts/list/changes to make later.

Congrats man that's awesome! I was busy all day today (personal life) and couldn't make it down. Bummer it wasn't last weekend. I'm very curious to see your 75 and notes. Really sucks your deck imploded in Top 8. We've all been there and it spoils an otherwise solid day.

[rubblekill]

If I could figure out a cut I would play 24. I think 24 is the right number, since GSZ can also help with mana acceleration. Keep in mind that I am utterly crazy on land counts though, I play 26 lands in Burn.

I'm currently bouncing between Rhinos and SFM. Rhinos seem better positioned but SFM seems fun.



Without Miracles around, I like Nissa a lot less. The fact that it's usually my top end and I can't GSZ for it, is a big deal. I was up to playing 2 Nissa in my last build where Miracles was in the format, but I've since cut it.



This is part of the reason I would run the full 4 DRS between MB and SB. You don't have to kill every one, all you need is your own DRS to counter theirs. At the end of their turn, eat a spell, if they counter you they can't eat Meren's target. If they don't counter, you get free damage.

----------------------------
Edit: Second guessing the Oboro+Tracker plan. Oboro might just be better as a 9th fetch. A fetch generates two Tracker triggers already, the only advantage Oboro offers is the life in exchange for being colorless. I need to think about it further. I'm really liking my SFM build which leverages 4 Trackers though. The deck just never runs out of cards, yet it's always using all of it's mana.

This is what I've been playing
Land (23)

2x Bayou
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Dryad Arbor
2x Forest
1x Karakas
1x Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
1x Phyrexian Tower
2x Plains
1x Savannah
1x Scrubland
1x Swamp
4x Verdant Catacombs
1x Volrath's Stronghold
4x Windswept Heath

Creature (18)

4x Dark Confidant
2x Deathrite Shaman
4x Stoneforge Mystic
4x Tireless Tracker
4x Veteran Explorer

Artifact (3)

1x Batterskull
1x Sword of Fire and Ice
1x Umezawa's Jitte

Sorcery (10)

4x Cabal Therapy
4x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Maelstrom Pulse
1x Toxic Deluge

Instant (6)

2x Abrupt Decay
2x Crop Rotation
2x Path to Exile

Enchantment (1)

1x Pernicious Deed

And the Rhino build I've also been looking at
Land 23
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Windswept Heath
2 Bayou
1 Savanah
1 Scrubland
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Plains
2 Phyrexian Tower
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Karakas

Creature 18
4 Veteran Explorer
2 Deathrite Shaman
3 Dark Confidant
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Courser of Kruphix
1 Eternal Witness
2 Tireless Tracker
3 Siege Rhino
1 Thragtusk

Spells 20
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Crop Rotation
3 Path to Exile
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Sylvan Library
1 Vindicate
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Pernicious Deed

You just can't build anything without Bob in it eh?[emoji23]

I so want to play that 4 trackers 4SFM list, it seems so funny to play. The problem is that in theory it's just worse than rhino against delver, and to be honest I'm having problems against grixis even while playing rhino: stifle and/or CT-YP are a problem, sometimes you just can't play around it.

I agree that 2 maindeck Nissas are overkill right now, even Sigarda feels clunky as hell most of the times: the online meta is grixis delver storm show and chimp and reanimape-griseltard.dec. Everything is too fast.
I either want to play gb and have a solid combo mu, or play a revisited rhino list that tops the curve with rhino and plays low cmc stuff. The problem is that card draw is nice, but I have found that against grixis delver you just can't play too much card draw, because you don't want to bolt yourself over and over. 3-4 night whispers/truths are not a safe choice, I have found after a lot of testing with gb fit (no rhinos to compensate here).

I want to play a deck with hymns and lilianas, that's for sure, while having access to massive life gain to dominate fair decks with bolt. UR Delver is popular online and it's a problem of a matchup in my experience, it's so fast and has so many burn cards..
With rhino.dec it seems impossible to have both, liliana-hymn and lifegain, and I can't find some way to build a deck that satisfies my needs. Argh.

[Arianrhod]

4 Veteran Explorer
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Eternal Witness
1 Fierce Empath
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1 Thragtusk
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Inferno Titan
1 Woodland Bellower
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Night's Whisper
2 Diabolic Intent
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Toxic Deluge

2 Lightning Bolt

4 Sneak Attack
2 Pernicious Deed

1 Dryad Arbor

2 Phyrexian Tower
3 Bayou
2 Taiga
2 Badlands
3 Forest
2 Mountain
2 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills

sb::
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Engineered Plague
1 Slaughter Games
2 Lost Legacy
1 To the Slaughter
1 Chalice of the Void
2 Blood Moon
2 Fatal Push
1 Abrupt Decay

This is the list I settled on for the event. I've explained most of my rationale for my choices previously, so I don't have much to say on that.

Let's see if I have anything specific to comment on from my matches --

Food Chain -- like I said, I flooded on garbage in g1. He established Chain + Griffin x2 + Scourge vs my Inferno Titan. Titan ensured I was only taking 3 damage per turn and he was spending his entire turn re-casting everything, but I needed to draw into something else to actually get ahead, and I never did. Game two I had a turn 3 Sneak Attack, which got Forced, and then he untapped into the full combo kill (cheating on mana via Deathrite). Really nothing to be done there.

I had a bye round 2 since there were an even number of players.

Merfolk -- game 1 was carried by Wurmcoil Engine and Diabolic Intent for Toxic Deluge to wipe out his True-Names. He Vensered my Wurmcoil back to my hand but didn't have enough damage to kill me, so when I re-played it, he miscounted and thought he could alpha me, which was disastrous for him. If he hadn't attacked, though, I would've been able to sweep him next turn regardless, because playing with Demonic Tutor is pretty amazing. Game two he melted me with t3 TNN t4 Phantasmal Image Phantasmal Image, and I just died. I had Meren with a couple Vets going, but that doesn't matter when he has 3 unblockable 3/1s. Game 3 I shredded his hand with Cabal Therapy and Eternal Witness, while a Deed stabilized the board. He drew lands and Vials, I drew business and inserted it.

RG Lands -- he has a double Crop Rotate hand g1 and kills me the turn before I would've killed him. Game two I hit him with Blood Moon and he's underprepared, with I believe 2 Grips and a Molten Vortex as live draws. He play draw-go for a million turns as I can't find anything to do once again, but I eventually manage to find a Zenith for Emrakul to kill him. Game 3 I have Blood Moon and in hand, but I hesitate to slam it since he's not really developing combo pieces quickly, opting to instead pre-emptively Lost Legacy him, naming Krosan Grip. This lets me safely slam the Moon the next turn. Eventually I Slaughter Games out his Molten Vortex and he concedes.

Tezzerator -- game 1 I shred his hand while ramping, Zenith up Tracker, and run away with the game. Sneak and Emrakul join the party a couple turns later, after Deeding his board and keeping his walkers under control with my 8/7 tracker. Game two I cheat on mana with Dryad Arbor and Phyrexian Tower, which allows me to slightly accelerate a Sneak-Emrakul the turn before he starts to turn the corner, as he'd developed several planeswalkers, a Crucible, and a couple other lock pieces.

Esperblade -- our game 1 is weird as shit, with both of us being mana screwed. I end up Therapying away a lot of his hand through Fierce Empath and Dryad Arbor, with two Deeds clearing out what he did manage to play. Eventually I hit my fourth land and stuck Sneak Attack, at which point he died quickly (I had Emrakul, Bellower, and Wurmcoil in hand >_<). Game two was much more elegant -- I obliterated his hand with Therapy+Vet, he failed to find basics, and I played Blood Moon (I saw UU, WW, and B cards game one, along with mono-Seas and Tundras, so I figured he was a greedy esper player and that Moon would be a KO. I was right). Game set match.

Nothing to say about the top 8 match -- I felt like I was plenty prepared for his deck, I just wasn't offered the ability to prove it. Felt bad man.

So, let's review the list somewhat:

Vets, Deathrite, Tribe-Elder -- all fine in the numbers they are currently present in. There are arguments for adding Tribe-Elders, which I will discuss in a bit.
EWit, Empath -- yup, nothing to see here.
Tracker -- only thing it did all day was vs Tezz, but I'm not sure how much of that is me underutilizing it, or was due to my matchups. It sure ran away with the Tezz game, though.
Meren -- I set her up a couple times and she was.....still mediocre, sadly. Her purpose was to ensure that I had slightly more continuous stream of creatures, but that never really happened.
Thragtusk -- actually saved my life game 1 vs Merfolk, buying me just enough time to get Wurmcoil going. Kind of meh, but I think it's a necessary evil -- you need a source of lifegain somewhere, and Thrag is still the best for that (in not-white).
Wurmcoil -- pretty good on the day. I'm content with this slot for now.
Inferno, Bellower, Emrakul -- yup. All still amazing.

Therapies and Zeniths -- n/a, although I wish I drew more Zeniths on the day.
Night's Whispers -- Mixed feelings. It did exactly what I wanted it to some times, but it also felt like it did nothing more than I wanted it to.
Diabolic Intents -- Amazing. Very happy with the pair, overperformed every time I had one. I never had one stranded without a body to sac, or at least never when I didn't have other things I wanted to do anyway.
Pulse -- Never really came up, but given the power of the Intents, I think that having the 1-shot kill basically anything in the deck is correct.
Deluge -- The maindeck copy definitely saved my bacon a couple times.

Bolts -- incredibly underwhelming. Granted that I didn't play against Delver, but I never had them when I wanted them and always had them when they did nothing.

Sneak Attacks -- I flooded on these a couple times, which felt really bad. But then there were also times where I could just run one into Force, knowing that I had a backup. I think this /has/ to stay at 4 copies and I just have to accept that sometimes I'm going to be mad about it.
Deeds -- overperformed on the day. I had to deal with a lot of non-creature permanents, and Deed's ability to just clean up everything was good, as it usually is.

Arbor -- also, somewhat surprisingly, overperformed. Being able to Zenith@0 as an additional ramp play gives a lot of depth to some hands, and being able to fetch into Therapies or cheat with Phyrexian Tower is good. Oddly, Arboring for Intent never actually came up, but I'm sure it will in the future.

2x Phyrexian Tower, 0 Volrath's -- I think this is correct for now. The 2nd Tower gives a lot more raw explosivity to the deck, which is good in a wild-west format like we live in now. Tower openers are your best shot against random combo decks, and can frequently lead to free wins against other opponents caught off-guard as well. Stronghold is still very powerful, but I think that it's not necessary at the moment.

Rest of manabase -- feels awkward, but am unsure of where the problem lies. It's not really so much that it feels bad or incorrect or that I was having egregious color difficulties or anything -- it just felt like it wasn't correct or perfect, either.

Surgicals -- still fine.
Rec Sage -- still fine.
Deluge -- came in a bunch, like having it there for sure.
Plague -- came in vs TNN decks, didn't play vs Elves, probably should be something better.
Lost Legacies, Slaughter Games -- the Slaughter was added over the 2nd Plague because I was unhappy with that slot and I didn't know what to add. These slots seemed like they were fine. There was an assload of Sneak and Show in that room.
To the Slaughter -- still convinced this is correct. Planeswalkers are popular, and it also hits Merit Lage or Show and Tell.
Chalice of the Void -- didn't play against Storm, but I think that dedicating the singleton slot with the pair of Intents is worth it.
Blood Moons -- Great. Very glad I picked them up and ran them -- they do exactly what we need vs Lands, and I like the idea of having them vs greedy Bug / Esper decks, as well as vs Eldrazi. I almost want a third copy, but I think that realistically, 2 is fine with the Intents.
Fatal Pushes, Decay -- mediocre on my day, but that's matchup-driven. I just didn't run into the Delver decks (of which there were plenty in the room) to need them, really.

Where that leaves us:

My biggest issue on the day was that I mulled a lot and I drew a lot of wonky hands where I would miss land drops or flood out. I managed to still make it work out okay for me, obviously, but it didn't feel great. The Whispers helped sometimes, but not as much as I needed them to. My current thoughts are to perhaps try to add a little bit more ramp to the deck -- possibly cut two Whispers for a 2nd Tribe Elder and a Nissa, Vastwood Seer. That will help smooth out hitting the land drops in the early game, as well as generating a bit of card advantage due to land-pulling. At the same time, I'm not sure that's the solution either because, as everyone who played Scape knows, sometimes having the heavier ramp core backfired in its own way.

I do want to retain one Whisper in the deck for sure, as a tutor target off a t1 Vet. I never needed to blow a tutor on a Whisper in that situation, but being able to go, for example, Therapy into GSZ@1 for Vet, sac, flashback, Whisper, was great, and I want the ability to have that chain off of t1 Vet into t2 Intent as well.

I consider the two Lightning Bolt slots open at the moment. I might just bump up the sweeper slots to 3 Deed 2 Deluge maindeck, which is something that I've done in the past in white control variants and has worked out. Alternatively, those slots might just go to...something else. I don't know what, yet. I don't have all of the answers at the moment. I like the direction the deck is moving, but it definitely needs a bit more smoothing out and a bit more tuning. The extra toolbox effect of the Intents makes the sideboard challenging to build, especially when we still don't really have a firmly established metagame and probably won't until Vegas. It doesn't help that I am likely to miss Mythic next month due to a vacation overlapping with it.

tl;dr: things are good but weird, and can be made a lot better, I think. Considering I still 5-1'd for top 8 through it all, I think that is a pretty good sign for us.

[Brael]

You just can't build anything without Bob in it eh?[emoji23]


I can, I just haven't found a reason not to yet. It's a good 2 drop in a deck that's short on 2 drops.

[Warden]

@Arianrhod: Awesome read. I think there's a typo in the RG Lands matchup...as you can't Zenith for Emrakul. I believe you zenithed for empath -> emrakul?

As for deck updates, I have some suggestions.
The first would be to replace 3x Nights Whispers for 3x Faithless Looting. Hear me out on this. You usually have chaff in hand to dump. The flashback cost is completely accessible. This may also increase Meren's "value". I tried that + Grisly Salvage in the Reani-Fit experiment and they certainly dig through the deck. Faithless is better because it can be used twice.
Second, I would replace 2 bolts with 2 Decay straight up. Your report reminds me of the many decks still out in the format. I think Decay is under-appreciated ever since top was banned. The card simply nukes 90% of shit you see on the other end of the table. 2 in the main gives you flexibility, increases removal of permanents, and adds 1 spot to your sideboard (pulling the 1x you had there).
Third, I think your sneak deck operates better when you have 7 ramp bros. How good was arbor as bro #7? This is the card I'd swap for DRS/STE #2. You don't have space to make futher cuts and I would keep Meren > ramp bro #8.
Fourth, I would reconsider chalice, push, and the +1 slot from decay. That's 4 SB openings to do whatever you want. Maybe you want alternative creatures for specific matchups (Ruric Thar as an example or Stormbreath Dragon against Wx decks)? Maybe you want to be a jerk and drop an Ensnaring Bridge so people won't attack you lol? Maybe it's better served by SB planeswalkers. Maybe you want to all-in on chalice with 3-4x.

[square_two]

2x Phyrexian Tower, 0 Volrath's -- I think this is correct for now. The 2nd Tower gives a lot more raw explosivity to the deck, which is good in a wild-west format like we live in now. Tower openers are your best shot against random combo decks, and can frequently lead to free wins against other opponents caught off-guard as well. Stronghold is still very powerful, but I think that it's not necessary at the moment.

I have not played Sneak Fit in quite a while, but my last versions were on 2 Phyrexian Tower and I very much appreciated the added explosiveness. Can approve this change :)

[Bobmans]

Thnx for the write up Kevin, and gz on the performance.
Dryad Arbor has been amezing for most people playing, while Meren hasn't been. I was always on the impression that Dryad Arbor was in any version of NicFit because it made Meren better, but could or should we play Dryad Arbor without Meren, based on the recent experiences?
3 Sneak Attack has always been the right number and imho Recurring Nightmare #1 is a better choice before Sneak Attack #4. But since we got the question running, isn't Recurring Nightmare not just a better card to be running along Wurmcoil Engine, Thragtusk and Inferno Titan? Or do we want to try and make Dryad Arbor better, if such a thing really exists..
Also Woodland Bellower does not really strike me as a useful card other then being an enabler for a one shot combo finish, which is something that happens but not reliably enough to warrent a slot. I imagine the card being dead a lot of the time, just as Sneak and Emrakul is when the other is not there. So my suggestion is to being more beef that is solid on its own, with Emrakul being the only exception to run outside of a possible grindy NicFit game.
Ok so, gonna step back to the idea of running 0 Decay. I actually think that in a junk list, running Qasali Pridemage we can pull it off. So why not in Jund? QPM can be some serious lock combined with Meren on (fringe) decks like MUD or Enchantress. Because it has a self sacrifice ability it can up and recur from Meren without any other card required. So couldn't Caustic Caterpillar be an interesting option to run and Cut Decay entirely? Freeing some space for say, a full set of PFire? What threat exists that we care about that cannot be reached by Caterpillar, Deed or PFire that SneakyNicFit cares about?
I never cared for Tracker in Sneakyfit. It is like bringing a checkers piece to a chessgame (Huntmaster or Stormbreath wouldnt be either).
And Yes, Blood Moon is sic as shit in this sideboard and meta, if you draw into it.


Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-G935F met Tapatalk

[Echelon]

Ok so, gonna step back to the idea of running 0 Decay. I actually think that in a junk list, running Qasali Pridemage we can pull it off.

Yes, we can. Thing is though that QPM on its own is much more bang for your buck than the Caterpillar. But that is some nice outside of the box thinking!

[Kobra_D]

Hello everyone,

Quick tangent, I've been testing Vizear of the Menagerie in rhino fit. I thought it would be sweet with stronghold and library but it seems underwhelming as a 4 drop.

The synergy but it may not be enough. Just as a heads up in case anyone else was considering it. Has anyone found differently so far?

[Navsi]

Hello everyone,

Quick tangent, I've been testing Vizear of the Menagerie in rhino fit. I thought it would be sweet with stronghold and library but it seems underwhelming as a 4 drop.

The synergy but it may not be enough. Just as a heads up in case anyone else was considering it. Has anyone found differently so far?

If you want a four mana card advantage engine, you're probably better off with Meren unless Deathrite is absolutely everywhere in your metagame.

[pettdan]

@Kobra_D: I think that most Nic Fit lists run more lands than creatures so probably a Courser, being one mana cheaper and offering lifegain (and breaking out of mana problems, crucial for all versions), will be better. If you're playing 2-3 Coursers for some reason it could perhaps be interesting to play one Vizier of the Menagerie for testing - each one of them enables the other.

[Ralf]

I want to play a deck with hymns and lilianas, that's for sure, while having access to massive life gain to dominate fair decks with bolt. UR Delver is popular online and it's a problem of a matchup in my experience, it's so fast and has so many burn cards..
With rhino.dec it seems impossible to have both, liliana-hymn and lifegain, and I can't find some way to build a deck that satisfies my needs. Argh.

Usually, I don't spoil anything until I have something properly tested, but as you are asking; here you go:

4 Forest
3 Swamp
1 Mountain
2 Bayou
2 Badlands
1 Taiga
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Phyrexian Tower

4 Veteran Explorer
1 STE
1 Ooze
2 Witness
1 Huntmaster
1 Thrun
1 Ishkanah
0/1 Beater

3 Liliana
0/1 Nissa VF

2 Sylvan Library
3 Deed

3 Punishing Fire
3 Pulse of Murasa
2-3 Beast Within/Maelstrom Pulse

4 Cabal
3 GSZ
2 Hymn
1 Toxic
1 Painful

So basically, you want to abuse Pulse of Murasa + Witness.
The rest is "Ice on the Cake" and pretty obvious.

You definitely can go 62 - 63 cards MD.

First testing phase is very promising:
- the deck can be a tad slow. I'm still trying to figure out a good beater (Primetime asks for Kessig + karakas + twin tower for example).
- Combo is not so bad (3 REB / 2 Faerie / 3 Lost Legacy / 1 Spellbomb / 1 Gaddock) SB included.
- Bad MU -> S&T and Big Eldrazi

Happy testing.

Regards,

Ralf

[Bobmans]

1 Ishkanah


Defenitly an interesting card, it came across on more occasions. Worth a shot.
How has it been for you?

[Dalton!]

Nissa, Vital Force has lost her place in Sneak Fit?
And what about Flip Nissa? Or both. I was Toying around with these walkers, but can not decide id they are worth a slot or just watering down the Power/Combo.

[Arianrhod]

Nissa, Vital Force has lost her place in Sneak Fit?
And what about Flip Nissa? Or both. I was Toying around with these walkers, but can not decide id they are worth a slot or just watering down the Power/Combo.

More that her natural prey isn't around anymore. NVF is insanely powerful, but slow and vulnerable to TNN (which seems to be roaring back as a card). She was exactly the card that we needed to deal with Miracles effectively, but with that deck gone, we need our slots for other concerns. I'm certain that she's still very powerful and will come back into the deck depending on the future metagame -- but right now, she's not really what we need.

Flip Nissa is a bit more interesting to me. With Decay starting to fall a bit out of the format, her viability definitely goes up. I'm debating trying her out in Sneak and seeing how she fares -- I've always been impressed with the card when paired with Sun Titan, but I haven't actually tried her in non-white lists.

[rubblekill]

Usually, I don't spoil anything until I have something properly tested, but as you are asking; here you go:

4 Forest
3 Swamp
1 Mountain
2 Bayou
2 Badlands
1 Taiga
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Phyrexian Tower

4 Veteran Explorer
1 STE
1 Ooze
2 Witness
1 Huntmaster
1 Thrun
1 Ishkanah
0/1 Beater

3 Liliana
0/1 Nissa VF

2 Sylvan Library
3 Deed

3 Punishing Fire
3 Pulse of Murasa
2-3 Beast Within/Maelstrom Pulse

4 Cabal
3 GSZ
2 Hymn
1 Toxic
1 Painful

So basically, you want to abuse Pulse of Murasa + Witness.
The rest is "Ice on the Cake" and pretty obvious.

You definitely can go 62 - 63 cards MD.

First testing phase is very promising:
- the deck can be a tad slow. I'm still trying to figure out a good beater (Primetime asks for Kessig + karakas + twin tower for example).
- Combo is not so bad (3 REB / 2 Faerie / 3 Lost Legacy / 1 Spellbomb / 1 Gaddock) SB included.
- Bad MU -> S&T and Big Eldrazi

Happy testing.

Regards,

Ralf

Thanks a lot for your input! EW+murasa happened a couple times in my experience, and unless the opponent has Drs online that "combo" is backbreaking in the fair matchup. Maybe murasa is the card that can justify playing a grove mana base? The fact that it can recur groves seems nice on paper, definitely more relevant than getting back a random fetch land

[Ralf]

Thanks a lot for your input! EW+murasa happened a couple times in my experience, and unless the opponent has Drs online that "combo" is backbreaking in the fair matchup. Maybe murasa is the card that can justify playing a grove mana base? The fact that it can recur groves seems nice on paper, definitely more relevant than getting back a random fetch land

Actually even with DRS on the field, pulse being an instant means you can at least play around once.
The list is still very rough and there is space for improvement but I think there is definitely something into it.

[MrIggins]

4 Veteran Explorer
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Eternal Witness
1 Fierce Empath
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Thragtusk
1 Grave Titan
1 Inferno Titan
1 Woodland Bellower
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Night's Whisper
2 Diabolic Intent
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Toxic Deluge

3 Abrupt Decay

4 Sneak Attack
2 Pernicious Deed
1 Sylvan Library

1 Dryad Arbor

2 Phyrexian Tower
3 Bayou
2 Taiga
2 Badlands
3 Forest
2 Mountain
2 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills

My latest iteration just to keep the thread up to date. Grave Titan has been awesome for me and leaves value behind if it gets plowed which is nice. 6-drops tend to be interchangeable against the BUG decks and Grave Titan presents by far the fastest clock when that matters (raced a Griselbrand with it last week!)

Sideboard still in flux. Trying more maindeck decays, not sure they're what we want but trying them. Sylvan similarly experimental. Sideboard in flux. Struggling hardcore against the local Miracles-turned UW Landstill-turned nu-miracles player, unsure what to do to work on that matchup. 4 Snapcaster 3-4 Counterspell 4 Force is really hard to resolve threats through. Anyone else had any experience there?

[Yutao]

Sideboard still in flux. Trying more maindeck decays, not sure they're what we want but trying them. Sylvan similarly experimental. Sideboard in flux. Struggling hardcore against the local Miracles-turned UW Landstill-turned nu-miracles player, unsure what to do to work on that matchup. 4 Snapcaster 3-4 Counterspell 4 Force is really hard to resolve threats through. Anyone else had any experience there?

If you're talking about Jeff Whites list, you just gotta jam spells against him. By forcing him to trade 1 for 1 or 2 for 1, his brainstorms and jace storms lose a lot of impact. Thruns always a option and his mana base can be quite weak. 3 colors with mishras factory feels weak to moon (or Plow Under, then ewit and Plow Under again). I feel like thoughtseize is your best friend in this matchup, while a number of therapies and vets come out. A second DRS to get under standstill is also an option.

[Echelon]

So... With Dryad Arbor overperforming and Meren underperforming for some, one might want to consider replacing Meren with the Vizier. GSZ for it when you have your Volrath's Stronghold on the field and enjoy the extra cards.

Or, with the appearance of Fatal Push, the Junk Fit crowd might be able to go back to the ways of yesteryear and run a Fierce Empath and Karador, Ghost Chieftain. DRS can't touch that. You cast a card, it's on the stack. Or, you know, cut a lot of beef and run Stronghold + Vizier + Meren + Empath -> Karador + Sun Titan and systematically grind people to a pulp.

@Arianrhod: Have you considered running something along the lines of Tasigur/Gurmag Angler? I imagine part of your problems come from missing combo pieces, causing you to not have pressure on the board (or a decent defense). W/ a single Angler in your 60 you suddenly have 4 GSZ + 2 Empath + 1 Angler = 7 cards that can easily turn into a 5/5 if you ever need it. I've played this for the last period of my Summoner's Egg days, and it really brought the deck to a whole new level. It gives you a secondary gameplan when your primary hasn't come together.

[ShadWills]

I'm curious what you all are searching for with Intent. I found that I was always searching for removal if I was behind or a creature if I was ahead (I can see Sneak attack fitting here). If I was searching for a land I am probably going to lose anyway even though I was able to search for a land. And when I was behind the removal was bad because it required a sacrifice and two extra mana. For this reason I started running more removal so that I would have less times where I was behind in this way. And also I switched to living wish because Shriekmaw and Vampire Hexmage were nice removal spells in a deck with Two Towers. Alongside Wasteland and a fatty and Living Wish can cover a lot of bases. It uses sideboard slots but you can regain some of that with thoughtful boarding. Boarding Faerie Macabre in place of a Surgical Extraction for example.

[Echelon]

On Intent: G1 removal, G2/3 either removal or silver bullets from the SB.

This was also the case at least 75% of the time when I ran 4 Intent in a combo oriented build.

[JackaBo]

So i finally got somewhat of a deck together and I'm gonna try it for real for the first time tomorrow. I've been testing versus Delver, Death n taxes and Grixis control with good results. My friends refer to this pile as the Würm-machine (should be said with german accent) which i think was awesome! It proved to be rather consistent.

Some notes: in my testing sterling grove was the worst card so i replaced it with more interaction. This may be totally wrong. The sideboard should probably include gsz targets such as teeg but i didn't get hold of any. I'd like to try dovescape in the side but didn't get hold of that either.

I'll let you wurmmachiners know how it went!

Counts : 60 main / 15 sideboard

Creatures:8
4 Veteran Explorer
4 Academy Rector

Spells:30
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Fatal Push
3 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Collective Brutality
3 Evolutionary Leap
2 Lingering Souls
3 Pernicious Deed
2 Garruk Relentless
1 Nether Void
1 Curse of Death's Hold
1 Starfield of Nyx
1 Sandwurm Convergence

Lands:22
2 Bayou
3 Forest
2 Phyrexian Tower
1 Plains
2 Savannah
1 Scrubland
3 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath

Sideboard:15
1 Carpet of Flowers
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Thoughtseize
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Golgari Charm
1 Seal of Primordium
1 Choke
2 Lost Legacy
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Humility
1 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Leyline of the Void


Created with Decked Builder
http://www.deckedbuilder.com/

[Yutao]

Is the Vengevine, LOTV, Punishing Fire "combo" too janky? Or is it too value?

[tescrin]

Is the Vengevine, LOTV, Punishing Fire "combo" too janky? Or is it too value?

It's normal. Jund has been doing that since 2012 or something, and the last report showed it has a 63% win ratio in that tournament. Vengevine may be dumb, but if you can find a way to get dudes who give you more dudes (Squadron hawk el oh el?) then you should be able to meet his condition reliably.

Mwonvuli Beast Tracker tutoring Gnarlwood Dryad for instance. I get that that is dumb, but I'm just looking for jank that triggers Vengevine. Gravecrawler is a great one. That with the Carrion Feeder combo is an easy way to do it.

[Yutao]

It's normal. Jund has been doing that since 2012 or something, and the last report showed it has a 63% win ratio in that tournament. Vengevine may be dumb, but if you can find a way to get dudes who give you more dudes (Squadron hawk el oh el?) then you should be able to meet his condition reliably.

Mwonvuli Beast Tracker tutoring Gnarlwood Dryad for instance. I get that that is dumb, but I'm just looking for jank that triggers Vengevine. Gravecrawler is a great one. That with the Carrion Feeder combo is an easy way to do it.

BBE cascade into a creatures works. Also intuition for Vengevine seems stupid (stupid value that is).

[tescrin]

BBE cascade into a creatures works. Also intuition for Vengevine seems stupid (stupid value that is).

Holy crap. I think you just convinced me that adding Vengevine to RUG Waterfalls is a good idea. And intuition with that would also be hilarious/stupid haha

I've been considering a janky "Nic Falls" or "RUG Nic Fit' which would use things like Arc Trail or PFire (or crop-rotation->Tower) to kill him, and get to do the "Waterfalls" thing on T2 sometimes. Combining that with some card-filtering that drops dudes in the grave could make a wonderful VV engine; which I would love because I bought them 4-5 years ago and never found a use for them haha

EDIT: Also bad, but could work: Burning-Tree Emissary [mana for another dude.] AND HORNED KAVU.
Oh man. Casual could be comin' to legacy.

[Dalton!]

I would be very thankfull if some of you would see through my Decklist for things i could improve. It is very stock as far as i know.

4 Veteran Explorer
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Eternal Witness
1 Fierce Empath
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
1 Thragtusk
1 Massacre Wurm
1 Inferno Titan
1 Woodland Bellower
1 Rune-Scarred Demon
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Diabolic Intent
1 Toxic Deluge

4 Sneak Attack
3 Pernicious Deed
2 Sylvan Library

1 Dryad Arbor

2 Phyrexian Tower
1 Volraths Stronghold
2 Bayou
1 Taiga
2 Badlands
1 Savannah
3 Forest
2 Mountain
2 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills


The Savannah is for a SB(maybe MB) Nahiri. i don`t know but i like to have her in case of a surgicaled sneak.

[Purple Blood]

EDIT: Also bad, but could work: Burning-Tree Emissary [mana for another dude.] AND HORNED KAVU.
Oh man. Casual could be comin' to legacy.

Bahaha that's one of my favorite cards.

My Burning-Tree, Horned Kavu, 8-Whack deck is legit son!

[Yutao]

Burning-Tree Emissary [mana for another dude.] AND HORNED KAVU.
Oh man. Casual could be comin' to legacy.

Legacy's the format for dreams. Just the other day I had my infect opponent stare at a Dragonlord Dromoka and realize that his inkmoth nexus was going to be blocked by a goddamn 6 drop to buy me the one extra turn for Siege Rhino to be lethal.

[ugotpauld]

I'm just going to post my old list as it is hilarious.

Should proba ly have an extra witness maindeck, and a canonist in sideboard.

So many options while playing the deck was fun to play

creatures (6)
1 x eternal witness
1 x primeval titan
1 x qasili pridemage
2 x veteran explorer
1 x wall of blossoms

enchantment (3)
3 x pernicious deed

instant (5)
1 x counterspell
4 x intuition

lands (24)
1 x barren moor
1 x bayou
1 x flooded strand
2 x forest
2 x island
1 x marsh flats
1 x misty rainforest
1 x phyrexian tower
1 x plains
1 x polluted delta
1 x savannah
1 x scrubland
2 x swamp
1 x tanquil thicket
1 x tropical island
1 x tundra
1 x underground sea
2 x verdant catacombs
1 x volrath's stronghold
1 x wasteland

planeswalker (3)
3 x jace, the mind sculptor

sorcery (20)
4 x cabal therapy
1 x crippling fatigue
1 x deep analysis
2 x green sun's zenith
1 x life from the loam
3 x lingering souls
4 x living wish
1 x raven's crime
1 x regrowth
1 x unburial rites
1 x vindicate

sideboard
veteran explorer
eternal witness
shriekmaw
phantasmal image
soul snuffers
spike weaver
quasili pridemage
kitchen finks
phyrexian revoker
grave titan

rest in peace

bojuka bog
phyrexian tower
volrath's stronghold
wasteland

[pettdan]

@Ugotpauld: congratulations! That must be the most extravagant list posted all year. Could you describe the fair and combo matchup gameplans? And I was surprised to not find Depths+Stage.

Also, please add cards-tags so we can read the cards, at least I need to look up a couple of them! :)

[square_two]

Regarding Dryad Arbor: Can't remember if the most recently posted Nyx Fit list was running it, but I've been impressed with initial results after including one. Basically adds ~9 more ways to start Evo Leap chain thanks to the fetches. Random usefulness as extra Therapy hits or another mana from Tower.

[wsurugby10]

Regarding Dryad Arbor: Can't remember if the most recently posted Nyx Fit list was running it, but I've been impressed with initial results after including one. Basically adds ~9 more ways to start Evo Leap chain thanks to the fetches. Random usefulness as extra Therapy hits or another mana from Tower.

I really like this idea. I'll be testing it out as well.

[Memories of the Time]

@Jackbo: Cutting grove to add more removal is the way to polarize even more our MUs, making tempo and midrange even better and Combo even worse. Could be a clever thing to do, but i really don't like to play in this way =)
Moreover, 3 GSZ with only 4 Veteran as a target? No thanks, i would prefer 2 Library/Truths/Whispers or similar, absolutely.
Nether Void is really underwhelming, and if you are playing maindeck Curse too: try Dovescape or just drop it.

@Square: I've played with Dryad, and i've come to the conclusion of cutting her. But if you're playing >2 Evo Leap, in this case it makes sense

[Gheizen64]

http://i.imgur.com/0tzEaRH.png?1

Possibly playable? Dodge bolt, AD and push, and trample over delvers making them sacrifice or generate additional fliers. GSZ-able too.

[rubblekill]

http://i.imgur.com/0tzEaRH.png?1

Possibly playable? Dodge bolt, AD and push, and trample over delvers making them sacrifice or generate additional fliers. GSZ-able too.

I like it a lot, even though it suffers from the same problem that affects a lot of the cool bombs that are available to us: it lacks protection and doesn't do anything until the next attack step. Sigarda says hi.
It's definitely worth playing/trying, especially because I suspect the card it's going to be at a bulk level price

[rubblekill]

E: Damn I posted again. Sorry

[Brael]

Possibly playable? Dodge bolt, AD and push, and trample over delvers making them sacrifice or generate additional fliers. GSZ-able too.

Could be playable. Swords kills it, I'm generally looking for haste when in red. But the upside is there.

[MrIggins]

At least minor synergy with Sneak Attack for whatever that's worth (I don't think it's very good)

[Arianrhod]

Good where we're already good, bad where we need help.

Also, is that actually a real card? The art looks.......bad.

[Yutao]

It just feels too slow and doesn't provide enough value. When you're smacking your opponent with a 5 drop, you're probably already winning the game, whether it's Thragtusk, Titania, or Sigarda.

[LVA]

Good where we're already good, bad where we need help.

Also, is that actually a real card? The art looks.......bad.

I was looking at the edh subreddit and apparently they have sources proving it's real. I can try to dig them up if you want but it think it makes sense that there is something cat based in that set given amonkhet and dragons have a ton of casual appeal

[Echelon]

So... I had a game today that'll make all Rhino afficionados... well... happy.

I was playing a game vs. a buddy and I had the following 4 turns. It was late in the game, I had 10 lands out.
- Siege Rhino
- Siege Rhino, GSZ for Siege Rhino. Rhino 1 gets Fatal Pushed before combat
- GSZ for Siege Rhino
- Eternal Witness, Siege Rhino.

5 Rhinos in 4 turns, fought back from the brink of death and snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

Most. Epic. Game. Ever.

[emaugust]

I am going to be playing in the Nerd Rage Gaming legacy tournament this weekend in northern Illinois (Edit: looks like it is going to cap at 92/96 players) and I was wondering if I could get a heat check on what the best Junk lists are looking like? I was on sneak fit and had built Arianhrod's latest list last night and it looks sweet but I think it might be a bit too deep for me at the moment. I've been playing 2 years now but quite frankly I am not a very good magic player so I am hoping that by going a bit lower and playing on curve, I will put myself in better positions than trying to set up combo kills in a format I am not well versed in.

So anyhow jamming Ricardio.fit seems like it will be a bit more fun - has anyone found any further junk tech in the last week or so? Dromoka is just too slow these days?

Thanks for any input - I love reading all the cool ideas generated by everyone here!

[509]

Alright so I've played about 40 matches since my last post and tuned it quite a bit so here's a little update:

Mass Trackers+Oboro sounded really sweet in theory which is why I was trying them out but they came short in practise. I never ever bounced Oboro (except once to fix my colours) and the Trackers themeslves were fine but not great, partially because you sort of don't want to run them out the second you have 3 mana, however we have stronger options higher up the curve. Went down to 1.
Leovold has been a house. That card just keeps impressing me and I keep winning matches I'd have no business winning without him. Great against fair decks and randomly hates on a lot of other decks. Made beating Enchantress a walk in the park. Having 2 has been relevant more than a few times.
Jace is still great.
After doing more testing Titania is back in the deck and not going anywhere.
Deeds have been amazing.


As for the sideboard:

B2B has been very lackluster. Against Lands/Turbo depths it doesn't help as they can just kill you anyways, against BUG/4c midrange piles you typically can go over them eventually anyways if you can stabilize and the card is awful if you're behind.
Marit Lage and S&T decks have been problematic so I added some edict effects to the board.
I moved Teeg to the board as he definitely affects us as well.


Without further ado here's my current list:

// 60 Maindeck
// 14 Creature
4 Veteran Explorer
2 Leovold, Emissary of Trest
1 Tireless Tracker
3 Baleful Strix
1 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1 Titania, Protector of Argoth
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Scavenging Ooze

// 18 Instant/Sorcery
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Fatal Push
1 Ponder

// 6 Other Permanent
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

// 22 Land
2 Swamp
2 Island
2 Forest
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Bayou
2 Tropical Island
1 Underground Sea
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Polluted Delta
1 Karakas
1 Phyrexian Tower

// 15 Sideboard
SB: 3 Leyline of the Void
SB: 2 Dread of Night
SB: 1 Golgari Charm
SB: 1 Nissa, Vital Force
SB: 3 Thoughtseize
SB: 2 Toxic Deluge
SB: 1 Gaddock Teeg
SB: 1 Diabolic Edict
SB: 1 To the Slaughter

Considering adding a Strix, maybe another piece of removal.

I'm currently at 64% of games/ 68% of matches won. I try to go for "serious", rated games but I realize it's still xmage so take it for what it's worth.

By the way can somebody share their BUG list? (square_two maybe?)
I'm sort of interested in how you guys go about beating combo without FoW.

[Arianrhod]

4 Veteran Explorer
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Eternal Witness
1 Fierce Empath
1 Tireless Tracker
3 Siege Rhino
1 Thragtusk
1 Inferno Titan
1 Grave Titan
1 Woodland Bellower
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Diabolic Intent
1 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Toxic Deluge

3 Sneak Attack
2 Pernicious Deed
1 Sylvan Library

2 Nahiri, the Harbinger

1 Dryad Arbor

4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Mana Confluence
1 Phyrexian Tower
3 Bayou
1 Taiga
1 Badlands
1 Plateau
1 Savannah
3 Forest
2 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Plains

sb::
2 Lost Legacy
1 Slaughter Games
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Celestial Purge
1 Recurring Nightmare
2 Blood Moon
2 Fatal Push
1 Abrupt Decay
1 To the Slaughter
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Chalice of the Void

Somebody convince me that I'm crazy.

[square_two]

By the way can somebody share their BUG list? (square_two maybe?)
I'm sort of interested in how you guys go about beating combo without FoW.

Combo will usually have me bringing in:

2 Flusterstorm
2 Mindbreak Trap
2 Surgical
1 Thoughtseize
2 Lost Legacy

and when you combine that with 3 Brainstorm, Jace, 4 Therapies, 2 Brutalities, 1 Leovold already, it really doesn't feel bad at all. Don't really mind most of the combo matchups.

I'm close to this (http://imgur.com/a/pF7y2) right now. Went with -1 Vet +1 GSZ, -1 Push +1 Decay, -1 Golgari -1 TS, +2 Lost Legacy in my side for my last league and I liked that alright. Don't really know what direction to go with it atm.

[square_two]

Somebody convince me that I'm crazy.

I thought craziness was a requirement to be posting in this thread :tongue:

If you really want to go with Deed/Deluge as your primary maindeck removal, why not cut Tracker and Deathrite? Steve, Witness, Empath don't care, they do their job regardless of how long they wind up staying on the board. Maybe Steve #2 and...Witness #2? Tracker doesn't take long to live through a Deluge, and you probably don't have to bother after landing him though. Another idea is to run Sylvan Ranger or Wood Elves / little Nissa which give you land and then stick around to be Therapy or Intent fodder. Or more card advantage like Whispers or Library, that does seem lacking here.

Feels like you are upping the power level by removing the single target removal. I'm not sure how the combo/negative matchups are affected, but anything fair/delver/burn is sure to improve.

Edit: I also am toying with the idea of 1 Blood Moon in the main as an intent target. They'll never expect it...

[Arianrhod]

I thought craziness was a requirement to be posting in this thread :tongue:

If you really want to go with Deed/Deluge as your primary maindeck removal, why not cut Tracker and Deathrite? Steve, Witness, Empath don't care, they do their job regardless of how long they wind up staying on the board. Maybe Steve #2 and...Witness #2? Tracker doesn't take long to live through a Deluge, and you probably don't have to bother after landing him though. Another idea is to run Sylvan Ranger or Wood Elves / little Nissa which give you land and then stick around to be Therapy or Intent fodder. Or more card advantage like Whispers or Library, that does seem lacking here.

Feels like you are upping the power level by removing the single target removal. I'm not sure how the combo/negative matchups are affected, but anything fair/delver/burn is sure to improve.

Tracker's mostly still around at this point as Bellower fodder. I've won an awful lot of games by Zenithing Bellower with a Tracker stapled to him, even if Tracker is generally -- and oddly -- somewhat underperforming on his own for me. He still has his run-away games, but they're a bit fewer and farther between.

Adding Rhinos also gives us a bit more life total to play with, which helps smooth out the slower removal game one (and then postboard we can bring in cheap removal to help out). I also look forward to Sneaking a Rhino on somebody.

Little Nissa is on my watch list at the moment. She might end up getting the nod over Tracker eventually -- she'd already be in the deck if she was Bellowable.

The deck still has a deceptive amount of removal:

2 Deed
2 Deluge
1 Pulse
2 Nahiri
1 Inferno Titan (yes I count him)

And don't forget that Sneaking Emrakul very frequently is removal, even if they have a bunch of permanents. Plus, you can effectively add two copies to all of the above by virtue of Diabolic Intent. The maindeck removal is expensive for sure, but it's also all very, very high-quality.

The problem that I've been noticing is that if they aren't just dead, we seem to stall out in the midgame. If they give us enough time, we'll recover for the lategame, but there's a 4-5 turn window that we're very weak in atm. This is my attempt at fixing that.

It also represents a new attempt at "fixing" our consistency problem without Top -- just be more redundant. More monsters. More threats. More Sneak Attacks (3+2 split). More overlapping cards -- more life gain. For good or for ill, this design lets us just worry about playing to our mana and our deck will just draw us gas.

It might be a terrible idea, but it's at least an idea, and just off of theorycrafting alone, I like where it's going. The metagame, at least around here, seems to be drifting towards equal parts Delver, BUG (a mix of delver, TNN, food chain, aluren, shardless), and Show and Tell, with Lands, Elves, Eldrazi, other combos, Esperblade, etc existing on a "tier 2" level. This deck is very much built for that metagame and checks off a lot of the boxes therein that I'm looking for. The question will just be if it actually works beyond "on paper."

[JackaBo]

@Jackbo: Cutting grove to add more removal is the way to polarize even more our MUs, making tempo and midrange even better and Combo even worse. Could be a clever thing to do, but i really don't like to play in this way =)
Moreover, 3 GSZ with only 4 Veteran as a target? No thanks, i would prefer 2 Library/Truths/Whispers or similar, absolutely.
Nether Void is really underwhelming, and if you are playing maindeck Curse too: try Dovescape or just drop it

Yup testing went great, real competition went bad. I started out great beating burn (what!) then going to time vs merfolk (which I would have won), then loosing to big red and bug natural order. Made quite a few mistakes but mostly the deck lost to itself. It was a pleasure playing Deed and Therapy.
Now back to the drawing board.

[Memories of the Time]

Yup testing went great, real competition went bad. I started out great beating burn (what!) egen going to time vs merfolk (which I would have won, then loosing to big red and bug natural order. Made quite a few mistakes but mostly the deck lost to itself. It was a pleasure playing Deed and Therapy.
Now back to the drawing board.

Understood: have you tried maindeck Humility? For me it becomes more and more usefull every game i play, giving you an incredible edge against many tier 2 and bettering some bad MU like elves, S&T and Reanimator for example. But the main point is its flexibility

[Ricardio]

I am going to be playing in the Nerd Rage Gaming legacy tournament this weekend in northern Illinois (Edit: looks like it is going to cap at 92/96 players) and I was wondering if I could get a heat check on what the best Junk lists are looking like? I was on sneak fit and had built Arianhrod's latest list last night and it looks sweet but I think it might be a bit too deep for me at the moment. I've been playing 2 years now but quite frankly I am not a very good magic player so I am hoping that by going a bit lower and playing on curve, I will put myself in better positions than trying to set up combo kills in a format I am not well versed in.

So anyhow jamming Ricardio.fit seems like it will be a bit more fun - has anyone found any further junk tech in the last week or so? Dromoka is just too slow these days?

Thanks for any input - I love reading all the cool ideas generated by everyone here!

Ricardio.fit hahaha
That's awesome.
If you have any specific questions, feel free to pm me.

@echelon: more rhino, more better. Skillerhino is a difficult spell to not cast.

[Brael]

Alright so I've played about 40 matches since my last post and tuned it quite a bit so here's a little update:
[LIST]
Mass Trackers+Oboro sounded really sweet in theory which is why I was trying them out but they came short in practise. I never ever bounced Oboro (except once to fix my colours) and the Trackers themeslves were fine but not great, partially because you sort of don't want to run them out the second you have 3 mana, however we have stronger options higher up the curve. Went down to 1.


I've dropped the Oboro plan too. It sounded good but I've found it's too costly giving up land drops. If the CA is already coming you're just losing potential land drops, and if it's not you're still going to see a land every other draw, which means it's only worth .5 triggers/turn (per Tracker). It works better as another fetchland where you can generate two triggers upfront. The only thing I have yet to figure out is if I want a 9th green fetch (so it would only get green) or if I want it to be my other colors.

[Arianrhod]

4 Veteran Explorer
2 Deathrite Shaman
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Fierce Empath
1 Eternal Witness
1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
1 Siege Rhino
1 Thragtusk
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
1 Sun Titan
1 Grave Titan

4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Diabolic Intent
2 Toxic Deluge
1 Vindicate

2 Pernicious Deed
1 Sylvan Library

3 Gideon of the Trials
1 Kaya, Ghost Assassin
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion

2 Abrupt Decay

1 Dryad Arbor
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Karakas
3 Forest
2 Plains
2 Swamp
2 Bayou
2 Savannah
1 Scrubland
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath

sb::
1 Celestial Purge
1 To the Slaughter
2 Fatal Push
2 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
1 Pithing Needle
2 Lost Legacy
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Painful Truths
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Rest in Peace

Brewin'.

Chad is Sun Titanable, which seems like a possible thing we should consider exploiting. Still very much focused on tuning Sneak, but had this idea last night and it amused me too much to not jot it down to come back to later.

[Kanti]

I only ever fiddled with this deck online a couple years ago, but I always loved it. It reminds me of being a little kid again, where I would basically build ramp every single time with x4 Rampant Growth if left to my own devices. I haven't been in this thread in a while, but have lurked a little and see no talk of ScapeFit. Who's still playing that, and why did people stop? That was by far my favorite list of NicFit, I've always hated BGw and preferred BGr.

Isn't Scape maybe even stronger than say, Sneak Attack? Sneak Attack is an A+B combo for the most part, requiring you to get an Emrakul, though you can definitely value out of it in this type of deck with so many high CC bombs. Scapeshift requires you to build around it a little more, but the core interaction of the deck is Veteran Explorer netting us two lands. Why has this list fallen out of popularity so much, and does anyone have a recent one?

[MrIggins]

I loved Scape, played it for a couple years to some pretty reasonable finishes, but in the end its strength was the versatility afforded by Burning Wish, and the strong two-pronged plan of fair creatures with an endgame powerhouse sorcery that you had to set up. Now the Scapeshift shell may still be reasonable, but that card alone is not enough reason to play the deck. Plenty of other combo finishes exist that are more consistent and less hampered by things like Wasteland or Blood Moon. The issue is that the fair creature plan of Huntmasters and Thragtusks just doesn't line up well with the rest of the format anymore. Huntmaster used to be a house in these fair matchups, now it gets brickwalled by TNN and other higher-impact threats like Angler and Tombstalker. It actually suffered a lot from the loss of Top, which was what let you do tricks of constantly flipping it back and forth. While he certainly can have his moments of greatness, Huntmaster has fallen pretty far. Primeval Titan is still a powerful card and it is possible an all-in Scapeshift style build can have legs but I can't imagine a reason to play that deck when something like Sneak/Show and Storm exist.

The nice thing about Sneak Attack builds is that your plan A and plan B intersect a lot better than they did with Scape. You want an Inferno Titan in your deck because it's a monster when you combine it with Sneak Attack on turn 3 or 4. But that card is also just very easily castable on turn 4-5 when you have it without Sneak Attack. The only card that is usually dead without a Sneak Attack is the Emrakul, and even then it's not impossible to hardcast her in a control matchup. Your opponent kind of has to fight over the Sneak Attack, right? But then when they do, you still have this huge monster that's coming in a turn or two, and it's still gonna kill them if they don't have another answer. Whereas with Scape, the threats are more easily ignored, leaving you with just a single 2GG basket to put all your eggs in.

[Purple Blood]

Somebody convince me that I'm crazy.

Crazy awesome.

Have you tested Lingering Souls? Seems like it might have some synergy with that list.

[Blastoderm]

Are people still playing Garruk, Primal Hunter? I'm still rockin' two.

[Echelon]

@echelon: more rhino, more better. Skillerhino is a difficult spell to not cast.

Yup, I literally played all the Rhinos.


Are people still playing Garruk, Primal Hunter? I'm still rockin' two.

His manacost still has GGG in it, so I'm still not.

On a sidenote - I believe I've found a way of dealing w/ Grixis Delver w/ my particular list - board out the Dryad Arbor package (Arbor, Intent, Meren) and some other stuff (a DRS, Tracker and Qasali Pridemage) for 3 Duress and 3 Lost Legacy. Lets me mess with their early interruption and Lost Legacy thins out their threats so I have an easier time managing with just a set of PtEs. I seriously love me some Lost Legacy.

As for Vizier of the Menagerie - I got him on the field a few times, and the fact that it clears away excess creatures from time to time has won me a game or 2 b/c it helped me draw into removal in time. The fact that it doesn't cost life didn't hurt there either. Heck, at some point I could even use him to apply some pressure. I'm not sold on Vizier yet, but I don't hate it either. It's a nice lategame card that also tells you whether to fetch (or GSZ) or to wait a turn. Lategame that can be incredibly valuable.