[Primer/Deck] Nic Fit

[Brael]

My opinion is that Garruk Relentless is going to be a better option for us than Gideon AoZ will be, partially because his mana cost is much easier, partially because we can use the rest of his abilities better than we can Gideon's, and partially because that opens up the ability to run Master of the Wild Hunt, which gives us an interaction slot off of Green Sun's Zenith.

I'm also probably going a different direction with all of this, mostly because I don't like the Stoneforge plan. I'll post something when able -- going to be entertaining a lot this weekend, so time will be crunched for a couple days.

In general, I'm just not a fan of WW costs with either a PW build or anything more standard. White is our tertiary color and trying to cast a WW card just doesn't work all that well, it's one of the reasons contributing to my lack of satisfaction with Sigarda.

I'm not sold on SFM yet either, but I decided I'm going to pick up a playset alongside a couple lands for BUG. I'm not sure what direction I want to go yet, good SFM builds really feel to me like it's just playing Abzan Stoneblade, but BUG is struggling with too many 3 drops. Maybe I'll just play B/G. Dark Confidant/Tireless Tracker/Courser of Kruphix/SDT/Gitrog combine into a very strong CA engine but I would happily add a third color if there were a GSZ'able 4 drop that also contributes to the engine. Maybe Mina and Denn, Wildborn? I remember that card briefly discussed when it was spoiled.

[sdematt]

I think if one does decide to remove GSZ, I think you basically become big Junk - Souls, SFM, walkers, almost for certain. Not being able to tutor for your accel might be bad, so at that point you might just run 4 DRS and 4 Vet.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

Hmm ... intuitively speaking, 3 GSZ seems like a good number. We aren't Elves where the first few turns are crucial to outright winning (in fact, I imagine a combination of Therapy and removal is more important in that regard for us not outright losing).

As far as sweepers and removal suite goes, Deed at 3 backed by a singleton Deluge or Gaze and 3 Path 3 Decay 2 Vindicate/Unmaking/Pulse.

Sylvan Library is worse than top on paper but in a meta full of suppression effects, Top can't save itself to Deed so it becomes much worse.

Anyhow, on to something else: looking at potential Gitrog synergies, Sylvan Safekeeper could be a nice accelerant/protector, especially with 2 Dakmor Salvage out of the library. Im naturally inclined to go with Prime Time as the 6-drop just to apply pressure/tutor the lands, but Im at a loss as to what the 4 CMC engine piece would be. Meren seems meh, especially without the Dryad Arbor to build it up, but it seems like the best option.

[sdematt]

Hmm ... intuitively speaking, 3 GSZ seems like a good number. We aren't Elves where the first few turns are crucial to outright winning (in fact, I imagine a combination of Therapy and removal is more important in that regard for us not outright losing).

As far as sweepers and removal suite goes, Deed at 3 backed by a singleton Deluge or Gaze and 3 Path 3 Decay 2 Vindicate/Unmaking/Pulse.

Sylvan Library is worse than top on paper but in a meta full of suppression effects, Top can't save itself to Deed so it becomes much worse.

Anyhow, on to something else: looking at potential Gitrog synergies, Sylvan Safekeeper could be a nice accelerant/protector, especially with 2 Dakmor Salvage out of the library. Im naturally inclined to go with Prime Time as the 6-drop just to apply pressure/tutor the lands, but Im at a loss as to what the 4 CMC engine piece would be. Meren seems meh, especially without the Dryad Arbor to build it up, but it seems like the best option.

I think Top has to do moreso with selection vs. Draw. Selection is great, but we NEED physical cards to keep the pressure on. Many times with Fit, you blow your load and hope your evasive threat gets there because you have few cards in hand.

As for Gitrog, Id honestly rather design around that whole thing. Gitrog, Titania, Knight, Safekeeper, and the Depths kill, very much like a big Maverick, in a sense.

3 vet
3 drs
3 Knight
2 Gitrog
1 Titania
1 scooze
1 e wit
2 safekeeper
1 sigarda
18

4 therapy
4 gsz
2 Deed
3 decay
3 stp
3 card draw
1 loam
2 Liliana?
Crop rotation?


1 arbor
1 depths
1 stage
1 karakas
3 wasteland
8 fetches
7 basics
22

[sdematt]

Plus, in this deck, you can board actual Armageddon and steamroll Miracles/Eldrazi (hopefully).

[uncletiggy]

@Jain_mor I'm sitting here currently. With my future testing to involve trying truths over librarys and the 1/1 split, as well as the 2 pulse slots being every combination of anguished unmaking, vindicate and council's judgement. Aside from that ob is shakey i could see him being a primal hunter, lord of inistrad, elspeth ke, or worldwaker.

4 zenith
4 explorer
1 scooze
1 qpm
1 witness
1 sigarda

3 top
2 library

4 therapy
2 ts
3 decay
3 lilly
2 deed
2 pulse
2 e bridge
1 trinishpere
1 garruk relentless
1 sorin
1 vraska
1 obnixilis

2 bayou
1 scrub
2 savannah
2 forest
3 swamp
1 plains
2 phyrexian tower
4 verdant catacombs
2 marsh flats
2 windswept heath


Sb
2 path
3 leyline of the void
2 helm
1 deluge
2 e plaque
2 grip
2 needle
1 ?

[Brael]

Just got back from my first FNM (and games of Magic at all) in a month. Before/during/after the FNM I got in some games of Legacy, on the positive side it's more SE Fit feedback, on the negative side all 3 rounds were against Miracles (against 3 different pilots, it's just a popular deck).

Anyways, I went 3-0 against Miracles in rounds and 6-2 in games and was lucky enough to start each round on the play. Overall, I really didn't feel behind against the deck at all but this echoes my usual sentiment. I've never felt particularly disfavored vs the deck but that's the popular opinion, I'm not really sure what's causing the difference in experience between myself and this thread. The deck performed exactly as it's supposed to, running Miracles out of answers and then winning with whatever is left over. Starting next week I'll get to start participating in the weekly Legacy nights again which will be nice, I had a class conflicting with the time for all of the previous semester, and have been traveling since the semester got out, can't wait to start getting more games in.

In one game that was particularly sweet my opponent was at 11, had a Mentor with 4 tokens, a Jace, and a counterbalance with a hand of 3 cards (one that I knew was a force), plus two fetches to my hand of Rhino x2, Path, land, a Sigarda on board, and a Dryad Arbor on board with a Cabal Therapy in the GY. I was able to make my opponent fetch twice to 9, then pay 1 to FoW on my initial Rhino, then hit him to 3 off Sigarda and finish things with a second Rhino by using my Path as a bait spell to screw up his Counterbalance. Sigarda definitely won me some games against Miracles where Gitrog wouldn't have but I'm still not convinced I want to stay with white.

In other news, still thinking about an enchantment build (or rather Contamination, but I really liked that previous posters enchantment deck) and while going through someones trade binder today trying to offload the FNM promo I won I noticed Herald of the Pantheon in the binder and remembered it exists. GSZ finds it, it accelerates, it's incremental advantage, and it even sacs to Therapy or Contamination if needed. I think that might be a key piece of such a deck if it's viable there would be Bitterblossom, Nether Void, Contamination, Courser, and a few others it would act as a cost reducer on and while something of Christmasland it's a completely viable to curve T1 SDT, T2 Herald, T3 Bitterblossom/Contamination

[Brael]

Double post

[Hmmm_Really?]

Just got back from my first FNM (and games of Magic at all) in a month. ....

"Post ya deck, scrub."

-sdematt

[Brael]

"Post ya deck, scrub."

-sdematt

If you want, I didn't really want to spam the same decklist without changes from the last time. Here's what I played.

Lands 22
4 Windswept Heath
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Marsh Flats
2 Bayou
1 Scrubland
1 Savannah
3 Forest
2 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Dryad Arbor

Creatures 19
4 Veteran Explorer
2 Deathrite Shaman
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Dark Confidant
1 Eternal Witness
2 Tireless Tracker
2 Courser of Kruphix
4 Siege Rhino
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons

Artifact 4
4 Sensei's Divining Top

Enchantment 2
2 Pernicious Deed

Spells 14
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Path to Exile
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Dismember
1 Maelstrom Pulse

Sideboard 15
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Scavenging Ooze
3 Thoughtseize
1 Shriekmaw
1 Carpet of Flowers
2 Choke
2 Faerie Macabre
1 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1 Golgari Charm
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Engineered Plague

I wasn't too happy with the SB but since most of my cards are sitting at home there's not much I could do about it. Basically I want the option to go up to 4 DRS in SB games at the expense of some other ramp, and I would like to try out Tidehollow Sculler (though I need to order them) in place of Thoughtseize. Something is just telling me I want cards that hit the opponent while disrupting them.

[Echelon]

So, back to Zenith: conclusions: we need to use Zenith to leverage card advantage engines rather than just grabbing fat. Maybe we should look into Symbiote+Visionary? Probably not, but it's a thought. Most of the times that our deck feels fucking stupid is when we're drawing multiple cards a turn, because we unlike other decks in the format, we have the mana to leverage those cards into physical board advantage, rather than just nebulous hand size advantage. Colorless needs to figure out if it even should be running Green Sun. Green Sun is one of the sacred cows that I'm actually not sure if it should be -- not across multiple versions, anyway. The biggest single advantage of Zenith is that it serves as Explorers 5-8 on turn 2 after a Therapy on 1. After that, yes, getting to cheat on deck space is wonderful -- but Green Sun has several severe costs, too, perhaps most notably that it doesn't interact with non-Green creatures, which is a category that includes some of Nic Fit's best options. It may be that Diabolic Intent needs some more attention.

Abrupt Decay: This is "the" G/B removal spell. But, should it be? Yes, it's uncounterable, which is nice in a world of Miracles and Delver. For 2 mana, it takes out anything <4. Noteworthy dodges of this include Jace TMS, Nahiri Harb, Batterskull, Venser SS, Gurmag Angler, Humility, Sneak Attack, Thought-Knot & Reality Smasher, and basically anything in a Nic Fit mirror. Lately, Decay just hasn't felt that too to cast. It's a decent way to clean up Counterbalances in game 1, and it's...fine? against Grixis. It's best against Shardless BUG, where it can take out abnormally large Goyfs and Liliana of the Veils.

What I'm drifting towards is asking if it's correct, in GBW builds, to run Path to Exile and Maelstrom Pulse / Vindicate / Anguished (some mix thereof) as our removal suite. We would likely need to bring the Qasali / Rec Sage back in to help clean up Counterbalances off of Zenith, but I'm really wondering if the bigger removal is better than Decay at this point, especially for the expected metagame that I laid out yesterday for Columbus. Decay still has its place, certainly, but I'm not sure that it's /as good/ at the moment as combining Path (cheap, fast, exile removal) with the 3s (universal removal, but slower). Running some number of Vindicates also helps push Gitrog and Meren back into the picture, which are both places I want to be with Green Sun Zenith (admittedly Meren might still not be good enough, but she's the type of thing I want to grab), and Vindicate gives us a valid land destruction plan in conjunction with sideboard Tsunamis, which is an axis that I like to attack Miracles on.

Sensei's Divining Top: How many Tops is correct to run at this point? Top has an enormous target on its head going into CBus -- as mentioned, Pithing Needle is everywhere, and I expect to see a fair number of Null Rods and similar effects as well. Probably Grips out of the green decks. Top plays well with Sorin, Death Metal God of Innistrad, but so does Sylvan Library. Painful Truths is absolutely fantastic for us (assuming we have the removal to keep our life total healthy, coupled with some lifegain). Do we really need or want more than 1, maybe 2 Tops at this point? We can refocus around Sylvan and P.Tizzle, run Tireless Tracker, maybe Nissa, Gitrog, etc, and then dodge an entire swath of hate. Just a thought.

---------------
Overall conclusions:

Vet/Therapy engine as as good as ever.
Deed is losing ground unless we force it to regain said ground (more planeswalkers). Backup sweepers are needed at this point.
Zenith lost sight of what made it good for our deck. Need more engines and advantage, less Rhinos to force us into a tempo/beatdown role that we're ill suited to occupy.
Decay might be worse than 3cmc removal, specifically when backed up by Path to Exile.
Top might be correct to scale back on, or even cut, in favor of better Zenith engines, Sylvan Libraries, and Painful Truths.

You know my thoughts about Diabolic Intent and AD/PtE. I like where this is going.

In this new deal in which we are questioning the legitimacy even of the sacred ~rhinos~ cows, shouldn't the first question be: "how do we want to win with the new deck?".
You guys have my attention, I am entertained.

Same here. This is going to be fun!

@Brael: Nice list. I'm loving the double Courser, double Tracker! One of the things I wanted to suggest in the light of "Maybe we want to cut some Deeds and go Big Maverick" was to run more Trackers. CA FTW. How was the combination of Top/Courser/Tracker/Confidant? Seems pretty potent.

Concerning the number of GSZ's to run - I'd stick to 4. They help so much in the consistency department in any phase of the game.

[Barook]

I've never felt particularly disfavored vs the deck but that's the popular opinion, I'm not really sure what's causing the difference in experience between myself and this thread.

Maybe it's the build - or your playstyle. E.g. I had trouble against Delver builds with my Eldrazi deck until I sat down and playtested with a Delver player, trying different things and finding out where the problem lied. Turns out I approached the match-ups wrong (e.g. boarding out Mimics vs Pyromancer - which seems logical on the first glance), but I only realized it after comments of my opponent what cards he actually feared. Changed strategy without changing the deck, works like a charm now.

If people have that much trouble with Miracles, they should sit down with Miracle players and playtest various stuff while getting feedback from the Miracle player what they love/hate to see. A change in perspective can help alot.

[Brael]

@Brael: Nice list. I'm loving the double Courser, double Tracker! One of the things I wanted to suggest in the light of "Maybe we want to cut some Deeds and go Big Maverick" was to run more Trackers. CA FTW. How was the combination of Top/Courser/Tracker/Confidant? Seems pretty potent.

It's very good, it slightly awkward in that it's pushing me to more 3 drops than I would prefer but I like having a bunch of CA pieces that are passable to good on their own and then combine into an even greater engine. Dark Confidant is a big part of that engine, if you notice most of my cards are either costing low amounts of life or giving some life back. With Bob I lose about 1 point of life per turn, but with Top I only lose about 1/3 a point (and Top ensures it's never more than 1). Alternatively I break even with Bob/Courser, or just gain massive numbers of cards with Bob/Tracker. I haven't gotten all 4 pieces at once yet in paper (did do it once in Xmage a couple weeks ago though), but they all flow together really well. I like the engine and it's part of what has me liking Gitrog since he's yet another piece. The main thing with Bob is that you can't tutor him, but I just look at that as being similar to Painful Truths or Top, you can't tutor them either but they still get the job done.

I'm considering dropping one Courser though in favor of a Vindicate, not 100% in either direction yet. I almost never double up on Coursers even when I have the option so another piece of removal might be better.

[Brael]

Maybe it's the build - or your playstyle. E.g. I had trouble against Delver builds with my Eldrazi deck until I sat down and playtested with a Delver player, trying different things and finding out where the problem lied. Turns out I approached the match-ups wrong (e.g. boarding out Mimics vs Pyromancer - which seems logical on the first glance), but I only realized it after comments of my opponent what cards he actually feared. Changed strategy without changing the deck, works like a charm now.

If people have that much trouble with Miracles, they should sit down with Miracle players and playtest various stuff while getting feedback from the Miracle player what they love/hate to see. A change in perspective can help alot.

Miracles is a good deck, I'm not really convinced it's a playstyle thing. More than anything I suspect it's the pilots, I for the most part only play small local tournaments while the players here that post the most about having trouble with Miracles are playing in GP's, Opens, and even large local tournaments. My best guess is that I'm just not running into good Miracles players and that happens to be a very skill intensive deck.

[Jain_Mor]

@Brael, yea I used to think the Miracles matchup was fine when I was playing local weekly events in Japan. Now I'm home and have to play online for weekly legacy and the miracles matchup is abysmal. I didn't change haha, my opponents did.

[emuhell]

@Arianrhod: guess it doesnt matter, but you miss the commander 2014 planeswalkers in your list. Maybe someone wants to yield 5/5 demons or something.

Other than that - big thank you for the in-depth analysis of the current state of Nic Fit. I'm tinkering with an updated version of the scapeshift list - cutting whishes, and the wacky PFire engine (mainly because of consistency).

[Navsi]

For the Enchantment build - Animate Dead seems like a good fit for the deck, since it lets us do dumb things with Contamination + Starfield, and generally goes well with both.

[Brael]

For the Enchantment build - Animate Dead seems like a good fit for the deck, since it lets us do dumb things with Contamination + Starfield, and generally goes well with both.

I like the idea but what would we be animating? The enchantments take up quite a few of the would be creature slots.

[Brael]

Well, had the G/B urge beaten out of me by losing to Maverick 4 games in a row. Solidly back on the 3 color plan though I'm still not all that enthusiastic about white.

[EpicLevelCommoner]

http://decks.deckedbuilder.com/d/203268

Preliminary draft of a pseudo-walker list I'm contemplating on building. Elspeth 1.0 is there as the main win-con, making dudes, making them jump, and if possible further breaking the symmetry with Deed with her bomb. Barring that, going with a classic Two Towers engine and both Swagtusk and Sacred Rhino to help with the long game stabilization.

A few things Im worried about though:

1. Lots of self-inflicted pain. Without 4 GSZ, I can't rely on tutoring Rhino or Tusk when I need to, which may be a lot here.

2. Dedicating too much room to advantage and selection or removal and sweepers ... and not enough for utility creatures. I like the creature package as is right now ... just unsure on this.

3. Removal/sweeper suite in general.

Any thoughts?