I'm keeping an eye out for enrage stuff that could work with Fiery Confluence. Even against a 1/1, I believe it would be three separate damage triggers. Confluence otherwise is pretty versatile and could work in an aggressive jund build. Generally, enrage sort of is a nonbo with our sacrifice engine - typically can't deal damage to a critter + sac to Therapy/Tower for instance.
Tomorrow night (Friday), starting at 7pm EST and running until midnight, my friend Bryant Cook of TES fame is going to be running a charity stream for hurricane relief -- figured I would plug that here in case anyone is free to watch / donate.
https://www.twitch.tv/bcook3289
Carnage Tyrant
Regisaur Alpha
Ranging Raptor
My inner 6 year old wants Dino Fit to be a thing so much
I would argue that Nissa, Vastwood Seer is good enough in the 3 slot (especially with the PW rule change), but in general I agree with you. Steve just barely makes the cut in my opinion. I think you generally need a pretty good reason to be using 2 CC ramp over more Deathrite Shamans, at least until you max out on DRS.
Sure, but I don't view Nissa as ramp so much as card advantage. /shrug. Semantics.
I don't view DRS as ramp because it's fragile and unreliable. Sometimes they have one active first. Sometimes there isn't a fetch to eat. It happens. I would much rather play a card that pulls a land out of my deck as a trigger or ability that I have some amount of control over. You don't have much control over Vet, but it's way too powerful not to play -- so for a 'backup' to Vet, I would def like something that, like Steve, I 100% know I'm getting the land from (barring counters/stifles/etc).
DRS is a fantastic source of ramp. Steve changes everything because he's 2 mana. He changes your curve from 1-3-4 to 1-2-4. That's a huge difference because in the first 3 turns you go from 8 mana to spend to 7 mana to spend, and you go from 1 mana spent on ramp to 2. That's the difference between having 5 and 7 mana to advance your board over the first 3 turns. That's a 40% difference in resources. On top of that, when you have excess mana, DRS can convert it into other resources. STE offers no resource conversion, and resource conversion is a huge deal for any viable ramp card.
Has someone actually tried running Nissa, Steward of Elements in a BUG shell?? I know there has been some speculation, but with the changes in PW rules now we will be able to run her alongside Nissa, Vital Force which is pretty huge to this deck.
Alrighty, here goes.
Ranging Raptors: Too conditional, too slow for the ramp slot. We don't play Wood Elves either, now do we? And that card will get you a land for sure.
Arguel's Blood Fast: Pay 1 mana more and you get Phyrexian Arena, which frees up your mana (allowing you to actually play the cards you draw) and costs less life. And then there's Tireless Tracker, which is GSZ-able, able to steal games solo, soaks up just as much mana but does not cost you life.
Enrage is a cool mechanic and black/red offer a lot of tools to activate it. Plague Spitter, Crypt Rats, Pestilence effects, Pyroclasm and whatnot. You would have to warp the deck around it a little bit, but it might be feasible to add a couple one-of Enrage dinos as green-sun targets, along with, for example, a trio of Plague Spitters which are not awful on their own.
Might all be Christmas land though. We have wiggle room to play bigger cards with Nic Fit so it's worth trying, but could
be too much trouble for too little value.
None of the Enrage dinosaurs have triggers that are interesting enough to be useful as of yet. The best Enrage enabler we have available is probably Walking Ballista, which implies either Recruiter or Ranger of Eos, so we're probably in Abzan colours. If there is a pushed green or green/white dinosaur with a solid Enrage trigger then it would potentially be worth looking at, but until that happens I'd be more interested in Regisaur and Carnage Tyrant as straight up beaters as far as stuff from the new set goes.
Not yet. I think she's a key to making BUG work, but figuring all the numbers out is hard. At issue, is the minus ability consistently hitting, and the fact that adding lots of non lands/creatures waters that ability down. It makes it hard to get things right in a deck that plays Therapy and GSZ, and presumably Force of Will if you're going out of your way for blue cards. I think flip walkers are the key to making it work and that it would be more of a superfriends deck. I'm not entirely convinced that Nic Fit is the proper shell... GSZ would be extremely weak, and the flip walkers don't play well with our normal creature base.
https://i.redd.it/vujb91qyhokz.jpg
Annnnnd Vraska is trash. Why do I ever hope for anything good in GB from WotC -_-
Vraska costs 6, but she's the best 6CMC walker in nonwhite colours. Being two Vindicates is nice. On a clear board she ticks up twice and then ults for lethal unless they have 4+ blockers. 8 loyalty is a lot on the turn she comes down.
6 is however a lot of mana. If I was gonna put a non zenithable six drop in my deck this would probably be it, but whether it's worth playing or not I don't know. Wouldn't run her in white, but elsewhere she's worth consideration at least.
She doesn't kill walkers, which is huge. It's amusing that her -3 hits Deed card types, nice call back -- but it's unfortunate that they didn't push her just a bit more and make it -X: deed for X.
I also don't know that I agree for red. Chandra, Flamecaller is much more powerful at 6 mana, imo.
Being able to kill angler and survive is nice. Chandra has the same downside as Nissa - if your opponent kills your walker (Pulse, Council's Judgment, etc) you come out of it with no board position, where Vraska's tokens stick around. 8 loyalty is also a lot - a TNN will have real trouble killing her and can't race her unless you're already low on life.
Not killing walkers is a bit awkward, but her tokens are hard to block and she probably wins the fight against any other walker so it's not the end of the world. Menace is sweet.
Even 3 loyalty after killing something is a lot.
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