10th at Eternal Weekend with Dino Scapewish

Took me a little bit to around to this due to the recovery from the weekend, but, here we are.

I'm Kevin McKee, and I've been pretty deeply involved in the Nic Fit archetype for quite a few years now. I don't tend to make many 'major' events a year...I'm kind of a homebody and I don't particularly enjoy travel, which limits me a bit. That said, I do typically make every Eternal Weekend, and this year was no different. My birthday fell on the Friday of the weekend, which was another incentive to come to the event -- while EW didn't have the best prizes and technically I probably should've gone to like, SCG DC instead or some such, I wanted to continue going with the same group I'd gone with every year, and it was supposed to be a nice birthday vacation.

We left Thursday morning, and ended up going to a Brazilian Steakhouse Thursday night, which was amazing. Unfortunately, something there didn't agree with me, and I came down with a pretty nasty case of food poisoning, one which I am still fighting with as I sit here typing this.

Although I'd originally been planning on just doing legacy side events on Friday, I was dragooned into playing in the Vintage main as two of my friends bought me in as a gift. Played Grixis Thieves but neglected to consider Oath when building my deck, so I quickly went 2-2 and dropped. After this, I had intended on going into the legacy sides, but frankly I was feeling terrible enough at this point already that I decided to just go back to the hotel room with a couple of my already-dead friends, and we just hung out and dicked around with like, modern affinity mirrors and goofy shit like that, which was a pretty okay time. I felt a little guilty about not playing any sides, but I wanted to rest up and try to make a deep run on Saturday.

You probably already know where this is going.

Here's what I registered:

4 Veteran Explorer
2 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
2 Tireless Tracker
1 Regisaur Alpha
1 Thragtusk
1 Primeval Titan
1 Carnage Tyrant

3 Cabal Therapy
2 Thoughtseize
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Burning Wish
2 Scapeshift

2 Abrupt Decay

2 Nissa, Vital Force

2 Sylvan Library
3 Pernicious Deed

4 Badlands
4 Taiga
2 Bayou
3 Forest
2 Swamp
2 Mountain
2 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
3 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills

sb::
1 Scapeshift
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Toxic Deluge
2 Pyroclasm
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Innocent Blood
1 Lost Legacy
2 Slaughter Games
2 Lightning Bolt
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Pulse of Murasa

A couple words on the deck:

This is a Scapewish variant of Nic Fit. Unfortunately, the dinosaurs it runs apparently catch the public eye, so I'll have to add "Dino" to its name now, I suppose.

As everyone is aware, Nic Fit lost Sensei's Top this spring, which has led to a pretty major shakeup of the deck. We spent a good couple months pretty convinced that Nic Fit was dead -- nothing was working, no matter what variant. As Ixalan spoilers started coming out, I decided to revisit an old friend.

Scapewish used to be one of the premier builds of Nic Fit. However, the power creep of the format eventually led to Scape's midrange threats being irrelevant -- Huntmaster, in particular, was a victim to this. With the printing of Regisaur Alpha and Carnage Tyrant, I saw an opportunity for that deck's creature plan to be viable once again. Additionally, Scapewish was always built to have the most live topdecks in the mid to late game out of any version of the deck -- with 6 functional copies of Scapeshift in the deck, the longer the game goes on, the more likely it is that the deck will rip a Shift and make the opponent explode out of nowhere.

I'll close this section with my standard disclaimer. Yes, Nic Fit is sweet. Yes, it looks like a heaping pile of random cube picks, limited bombs, and modern staples. I've heard it all, many, many times. In a well-built Nic Fit list, however, nothing is random. Every card is chosen, very carefully, for a reason. The deck is not easy to play. I'd be glad to see more people pick up the deck and do well with it, but the amount of format knowledge, in particular, that it requires to play correctly is very challenging for most. The deck also requires that you are capable of thinking in depth at least 3 turns in advance, taking into account your cards, your opponent's cards, and both players' possible draw steps. Being flexible and thinking outside of the box is also a required skill -- Nic Fit is extremely NOT linear, and if you try to play it like it is, you're doomed to failure.

Player meeting:

We're told there are just over 700 people, good for 11 rounds of swiss. 11 rounds in one day is an absolute nightmare, and if you've managed to never endure that, I would recommend keeping it that way.

Round 1: Nick with UB Tezz

My opponent plays Inventors Fair and passes, which suggests either Tezz or a weird Helmline brew. I play a Library, and draw 3 cards off of it before the game ends -- UB Tezz isn't the quickest deck in the world at pressuring you, and their only source of burst damage is Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, so as long as you make sure you aren't just dead to 5 out of nowhere, you can afford to spend some life to keep some cards. These extra cards let me rip his hand to shreds while ramping through 2 Therapies and 2 Vets, which results in a pretty fast Scapeshift kill.

Game two takes a bit longer. He plays a Chalice@1 on turn 2, which is fine -- I kept a slow hand with Library and a Deed, and didn't have any one drops anyway. I draw 2 off Library again while he sets up his board. Eventually he makes a Jace, brainstorms, and swings in with his Strix. This allows me to slam the Regisaur, sending the Kelly token to kill the Jace. After this, we end up in a bit of a back-and-forth -- he has a Thopter Spy Network which is doing a ton of work, as well as a big Walking Ballista, and I'm unwilling to Deed away my Library. I'm short on damage to kill him with Scapeshift, but I end up Shifting anyway, targeting all of his creatures and putting him to 10. Eventually I end up Deeding away my Library and his Spy Network, along with some mana rocks, but I wait until I have a backup Deed in my hand. This results in me dropping to 6. After I blow up the world, he plays Thopter Foundry and Sword, which also promptly get Deeded away. From there, I Zenith up Carnage Tyrant, then play Nissa, Vital Force and swing for 12. Playing a sandbagged basic Mountain from my hand finishes him off.

1-0, 2-0.

Round 2: Jon? with Grixis Delver (my handwriting sucks)

Game one is carried by Tireless Tracker after some Vet/Therapy action. He gets me to 9 before dying to a Burning Wish.

Game two is a bit closer. He has a Wasteland parked in play and I know he has a Surgical in his hand for most of the game, so I need to be careful to not play the Valakut that's in my hand. I eventually bait out the Surgical by Zenithing for 1 with a Vet already in my graveyard. This opens the door for me to Shift a couple turns later after Tireless Tracker, again, puts in a lot of work.

2-0, 4-0.

Round 3: Ruben with ANT (on camera feature match, [https://go.twitch.tv/videos/183919079] fast forward to 2:57)

Before we got called to the feature match area, Ruben and I had sat down and just started setting up at our assigned table. We also had chatted a little, so I knew he was both using his Lotus Petal playmat and also was from Spain, both of which sent off warning bells in my head. I also REALLY wanted to be on camera vs a fair deck where I could actually flex the deck's muscles a bit, so when I kept my opening hand, I knew in my heart of hearts that I was probably just dead. I shouldn't have kept it, but I wanted to be against a fair deck so badly that I basically said fuck it. He leads off with Underground into Duress and I knew that I was basically dead on arrival.

Game two saw my opponent not having any win conditions left in his deck, while for game three I had just enough disruption to get into a fairly quick Scapeshift and kill him the turn before he was about to go off.

I won't go into too much detail because there's a video right there, but yeah, was good.

I also got an on-camera interview after my match where I got to talk about the deck a little bit. From watching the stream back, evidently I won over public opinion over the course of my match and interview -- pretty much no respect going in, and an awful lot going out. I can live with that.

3-0, 6-1

Round 4: Brian Coval with Grixis Delver

Coval and I have been friends for upwards of probably 8 or 9 years now -- he was originally from the same area as me, before he moved to Pitt, and he had a front row seat to the early days of Nic Fit development. He also has always been of the opinion that Scapewish was the best version of the deck, so he knew exactly what he was in for.

Game one was a pretty easy affair on my part -- I had double Vet, double Therapy and a Deed to clean up, and then went into a Scapeshift from there.

Game two was very close, and ultimately came down to me not leaving a Pyroclasm in my sideboard to Wish for -- I had boarded both in and left Deluge out, with the intention of that being my wishable sweeper -- problem being that my mana never developed effectively this game, and I was one mana short of Wish-Deluge to clean up the board and stabilize.

Game three was some pretty tragic variance. I kept 3 cards 4 lands, including Sylvan Library. My Library got Therapied away, but Coval had a pretty slow hand. Unfortunately my drawsteps for the next 9 turns were a Sakura-Tribe Elder and 8 lands. After the game, he showed me that he had no protection in hand, either. If I'd found literally anything other than lands, I probably would've been perfectly fine.

Unfortunate, but sometimes it happens with Top not in the format now.

3-1, 7-3.

Round 5: Nathan with Grixis Delver

My notes start to wane a bit now, but I'll do the best I can.

He explodes game one after flipping a Delver that gets Decayed. He never manages to establish a board presence from there, and I win with 17 life left.

I almost stabilize game two after his Delvers proceed to shit on him to a large degree. He has a pair out and it takes them FOREVER to flip, like, easily 6 turns. He also has a very disruptive hand, though, with a pair of Forces and a Daze, as well as some wastelands. Eventually the Delvers finally transform and I die pretty quickly after that.

Game three he gets me to 10, but I shift him out and he doesn't have the protection.

4-1, 9-4.

Round 6: James with Sneak/Show, no Omni

Our first game is pretty strange. He has a bunch of mana and counterspells, but can't find gas with his cantrips. I aggressively get out a pair of Vets, because it is very much possible to win through a Snuck Emrakul. I also park a Deed in play as a future sac outlet / potential Griselbrand killer. Eventually I lure his pair of Forces out with my pair of Tireless Trackers, found off of Sylvan Library, which lets me break Deed for 1, fetch 4 basics, and cast Scapeshift for the win.

For game two, he has a hand with both an Emrakul and a Griselbrand in it, as well as Force of Will and a Spell Pierce, but struggles to find an enabler. I slaughter games out his Emrakuls, but stall out myself when trying to find either a way to win the game or another lock piece to hit his Griselbrands. I do have a Surgical in my hand, but I need either a creature for the Therapy in my graveyard or another discard spell. Thragtusk comes along a turn or two later, and he opts to let the Tusk resolve before realizing that I can flashback the Therapy, which he has to Force to protect his Griselbrand. This lets me Surgical his Forces after he Ponders with a Keep. Worried about discard, he had left a Sneak Attack on top of his deck, which then got shuffled away. Also, with his Forces gone, I'm no longer worried about Griselbrand really -- Griselbrand is only scary with Emrakul gone if the player can draw into a bunch of Forces -- with both gone, Griselbrand is functionally irrelevant, honestly -- especially Sneak Attacked ones when I'm at 25.

After a couple more turns of digging, I hit a shift and kill him.

5-1, 11-4. Deep run is officially live.

Round 7: Ben with mono-brown 12post

This guy's deck was sweet and terrifying, and featured Cloudposts, lock pieces, Monoliths, and eldrazi of larger sizes -- TKS, Smasher, Endbringer, and titans.

Game one he does a bunch of inconsequential stuff, including a Chalice at 1 and 2, but dies to a Scapeshift.

Game two he leads Cloudpost into Cloudpost into Cloudpost and very, very bad things happen to me very quickly. I do learn that he has Warping Wail off a sniped Cabal Therapy, though.

Game three we're both terrified of each other's deck at this point, and we end up in a board state where he HAD to play a threat and I HAD to play Scapeshift, and we were both pretty sure we were dead. As it turned out, he didn't have the Warping Wail this time, and I got there. Super spooky, very close match.

6-1, 13-5

Round 8: Matt with GBWu Nic Fit

This is where the Table 6 Carnage Tyrant image on Reddit came from.

Super cool to have a Nic Fit mirror, especially between two very different versions, that late into the day at that high of a table. Was kind of unfortunate that we didn't get this one on camera just to tilt everyone in twitch chat xD

Unfortunately for my opponent, Scapeshift is extremely powerful in the mirror.

He over-extended into a devastating Wished Deluge in game one, and game two was a bit of a drag-down grind game, but my topdecks are designed to be better, so it ended poorly for him. We did have a really weird line of plays where I had a Nissa Vital on an open board, but then he played his own Nissa Vital and hit mine, so I hit his, so he killed mine, but then Regisaur came along and finished his :>

Ah, legacy.

7-1, 15-5

Round 9: Eric Vergo with RUG Delver

Not like this.

Vergo is another good, old friend of mine. We'd been hoping to get to the point where we could draw, but unfortunately we were paired up a round or two too early. Awkwardly, I had given him his decklist a couple days before the event (barring some sideboard changes), so I knew everything that was going on in there before the match.

I mulled to 5 on the draw game one, which is basically a death sentence against RUG Delver. He had a pretty gross hand on top of that, but I think I would've been okay if I'd had one or two more cards.

Game two was super close, but the Giant Implacable Death Lizard won the race.

Game three we ground out for a while -- he had a Stifle for my first Deed, but my second one went through and wrathed him. He had a reload, though, and I couldn't find another sweeper, a big body, or win condition over a couple draw steps with Library rolling to do anything. Never drew a Wish in any of the three games, actually. The good news is that we pretty much knew that the winner of this match was going to top 8, barring really shit luck in the last two rounds, and the loser still had a shot assuming a win-out.

7-2, 16-7

Round 10: Kyle with Eldrazi

He drops me to 8 off some beats in game one, but can't kill me before Valakut throws some angry mountains his way.

Game two here was insane. I have a Library rolling and he has some pretty fast beats. I Deed away his Chalice and Matter Reshaper, which shows me a Smasher, but he reloads into Mimic x2 TKS, and I drop to 1 life before I stabilize. Thragtusk jumps me back to 6, but I had to sac the Tusk to Therapy the Smasher. He swings in with the TKS and I chump with the beast token, but next turn Nissa Vital comes down, untapping a basic to make a huge blocker. He opts to not attack, which buys me a turn to rebuy Thragtusk with her -3 and play him again. From here, I stall out successfully, going back up to 21 before eventually finding a scapeshift to kill him. He did manage to kill my Vital Force the turn before I found Shift, but I wasn't worried because I'd been floating the second Vital Force with my Sylvan Library for a couple turns.

8-2, 18-7

Round 11: Bruce with Death and Taxes

The last round, finally.

I'm starving and exhausted at this point, so I wasn't in the best shape, which led to me punting away game one here...twice. The first was on a bad Therapy name, and the second was on a misused Wish. I did get to find out my opponent was playing triple Mirran Crusader, though, which is somewhat concerning. I was pretty furious with myself after the game, so I just kind of summoned up the last of my energy and focused on the other two games as much as I could, which resulted in a win. Death and Taxes is usually pretty easy for me, as well -- I definitely didn't want to lose my potential win-and-in to a good matchup just because I was tired.

Final record:
9-2 in matches, 20-8 in games.

I end up with the 3rd best breakers of the x-2s, which puts me at 10th place, good for 350 in credit. While I certainly would've liked the Top 8, especially with how soft the top 8 would've been to me meta-wise, I can't complain about where I ended up -- or the fact that my only losses were to friends, both of whom went on to top.

If you're interested in hearing a more complete line-by-line review of the decklist, I'll be posting that in the Nic Fit thread next, so you can hop over to that.

Props:
-) My opponents for all being generally great people. Eldrazi guy was a little grumbly, but I mark a lot of that up to the fact that he was playing Eldrazi -- turns out a buncha spaghetti can make anyone upsetti.
-) Not hitting any of the large number of Reanimator landmines that were in the room in the early rounds. Yikes.
-) Calvin and Caffrey for recommending me for a feature match.
-) The other guys in the Nic Fit community, especially Volrath and Squaretwo, for following me around and keeping me company throughout the day.

Slops:
-) Food poisoning. Seriously, I can't wait until I'm healthy again. This is such nonsense.
-) My deck isn't fully German foil anymore :( I got rid of some of the pieces a couple years ago because I didn't think the deck would be good again. RIP.
-) Being paired against my friends before we could draw.

I will definitely not be in DC this weekend -- like I said, I don't travel to events much anymore, and I need some time to recover from this intestinal blight anyway. If I had to guess, my next major event will likely be sometime in the new year, perhaps one of the team SCGs or something. Good luck to everyone going, though!

Oh, in closing, I suppose I should give my thoughts on Deathrite, since that's kind of a hot-button topic right now.

I don't think anyone will disagree that Deathrite is a good card. Personally, I think that Deathrite should've just been a G mana costed creature, while remaining otherwise the same -- just take away the ability to play him off of an Underground Sea. Whether or not Deathrite needs banned....I dunno. I like the format currently, it's grindy and interactive, but the combo decks are still very much in the room and haven't been pushed aside. The only real problem I see is that the (non-nic fit) fair non-blue decks have basically disappeared at this point. Like Jund or Junk with Bobs and so on....the BGx decks have all just moved to blue now, and I think that that is very much a problem.

Of course, banning Deathrite isn't going to fix that problem.

I see Deathrite as a ban-worthy card, but one which should probably not be banned, ultimately. While it's true that we're at something of a high point for Deathrites currently, that just means the metagame has a chance to adapt. The other problem is that Deathrite is somewhat of a police card, and helps to keep the Reanimators and Dredges down, which I see as a net positive influence on the format.

tl;dr: I think it would be reasonable to ban Deathrite, but I personally hope that they don't do it. They should remove a blue card before they take another tool away from the BGx fair decks. In an ideal world they'd just errata the thing to be just [G] instead of [B/G], but that'll never happen.

As a guy who can appreciate a strange interesting effectivedeck, I love the Nic fit deck could do so well piloted by a good pilot with an interesting build. Congratulations! I heard rumors about your deck and finish up until I finally was on the ride home I didn't actually get to see it as I too was playing to the end. I personally loved a bug nic fit deck that I played a while back and may run it back at some point. Hope to see you finish well again!

I love everything about this.

I was watching your feature match while cooking dinner tonight. Definitely wasn't expecting you to win against storm, but it was awesome watching you play. I haven't given the Jund colors of Nic Fit a try but I definitely want to now!

What's the Twitch channel? I click the link and it just says channel offline.

Great report!

Nice report, thanks!

Great report Kevin. It was a pleasure to play you in the last round. That game 3 scapeshift one-shot was pretty sweet. Cheers, Bruce.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TLK

What's the Twitch channel? I click the link and it just says channel offline.

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Google "Card Titan Twitch" I can't get you a link as I'm currently at work and Twitch is blocked. When he says @3:31 for the interview he means 3 hours and 31 minutes in the Legacy day one coverage video.

Here's the video coverage.

Match: https://go.twitch.tv/videos/184035695
Interview: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/183919079?t=03h33m45s