Originally Posted by Whitefaces
Actually try instead of think. I'll see you both on the other side afterwards.
By the way, I've gone -1 Deed, +1 Toxic Deluge to accomodate the Guiles while maintaining the same number of sweepers. You can fibd my list a few pages back.
Personally, this type of response makes me absolutely never want to try Mirri's Guile.
You're telling me that being 1 mana cheaper is such a completely and un-questionably obvious advantage compared against Library which can DRAW you cards when you are in a position to use them to pull ahead? I'm not convinced, and neither are others here.
Sure, I can see having Guile on turn 1 against combo is nice. But having that + relevant disruption in the top 3 + being in a situation in the first place where you -need- that opening is so very slim. It can't possibly outweigh other similarly statistical openers enough to make a difference. Surely t1 Thoughtseize -> Library is just as powerful? Or Library drawing you TWO necessary discard/disruption in a single turn to close the door? Because that's a possibility just the same as t1 Guile into ohmygod thank-goodness-that-saved-me.
Is it Leovold that worries you? Is he so predominant in your meta that you can't afford to have a blank Library? I regret even mentioning him and doing the helpful work of discussion on your part.
You are underestimating the Cloudpost package. Removing that would turn the deck into something completely different, and in my opinion make it much weaker in the process. A 5 mana 8/8 trample is nice, but dies to Swords to Plowshares and a bunch of other stuff (Liliana for example) without doing anything, and in the spots were i go for Eldrazi it would usually not win the game. Ulamog is there to deal with problematic permanents and often good enough, but Emrakul is the end goal. Casting Emrakul wins the game on the spot 99/100 times, and i haven't lost a game yet where i had Emrakul + Karakas for infinite turns going. And it's not always just the backup plan, what's the backup plan and what's the primary plan changes from matchup to matchup (and sometimes game to game) between Marit Lage, Eldrazi and grindy midrange plan, in my opinion it makes the deck stronger and more unpredictable to have these different plans.
With the Eldrazi package i have the inevitability and win the lategame against every deck, removing it would probably improve the Delver matchup but make many other matchups much worse. And it's not like i'm losing to Delver decks all the time, i'm confident i'm slightly favored against most Delver decks and certainly never a huge underdog. Maybe even favored against RUG-Delver (now 3-2 in matches and 7-5 in games, and i lost 2 games because i punted).
Also, if i would remove the Eldrazi package and some lands, i wouldn't have enough lands to run Mox Diamond any more. Losing that would actually make the starts slower and less explosive, and in consequence make all the combo matchups worse, and probably Delver too. Even though the Eldrazi themselves are bad in those matchups, the end result could be a deck that's weaker even in some of those matchups. I don't see a reason to try radical changes like that, the deck is doing fine - it might need some minor tweaking, but nothing so extreme.
I'm not playing Dark Confidants, so I can't offset the card disadvantage as easily as your builds can. I'm more interested in making all my cards relevant individually (with immediate value or resiliency) rather than hoping to overwhelm the opponent with sheer volume of small threats that accrue incremental value. Obviously some cards overlap between the two (Tireless Tracker, say) but I'd much rather run Stoneforge Mystic or Baleful Strix than Dark Confidant, personally. The best-case scenario for you is really good (you get to run high-impact card disadvantage effects like crop rotation which aren't resilient enough for me) but I'm not willing to sacrifice that resiliency and consistency for the sake of the possibility to run away with a game or two if my opponent bricks on removal - if they can't deal with a two-drop, Stoneforge probably ends the game almost as effectively as Bob does.
What a shitty response.
Guile is a very simple and proactive card, meaning theory will go a long way with it as opposed to, say, choosing a removal suite based on the metagame. I've played Nic Fit for a very long time, but obviously never with Guile while SDT was around. But looking at his list (note, not yours), with three Pernicious Deeds, it wouldn't be a good inclusion.
Then don't. Your loss, lol. All the theorycrafting in the world then won't convince you and I don't care.
As for Library/Leovold, who said anything about not running Library and who gives a damn about the interaction w/ Leovold? Seriously, it's so fringe, why the hell would I bring it up as a valid reason to pick Guile over Library?
Yes, saying "Actually try something before dismissing it b/c I tried it and loved it" is the shittiest thing ever. I'm a monster. Sheesh.
As for the list - his 3 Deeds can also turn into 2 Deeds + Deluge when tweaking it.
I don't run Confidants and Crop Rotations... That's Brael. I run shitty Confidants (Courser/Vizier) and a lot of shuffle effects. Runs like a dream.
Ah yeah, now I remember why I don't come in this thread anymore.
Thanks Echelon and Brael for your advice.
I tried to trim my mana costs and change some cards. At this moment my decklist looks like this:
18 Creatures
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Veteran Explorer
2 Deathrite Shaman
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Eternal Witness
1 Courser of Kruphix
1 Tireless Tracker
4 Siege Rhino
1 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
6 Instants
4 Path to Exile
1 Crop Rotation
1 Abrupt Decay
11 Sorceries
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Toxic Deluge
2 Painful Truths
3 Enchantments
1 Sylvan Library
2 Pernicious Deed
0 Mirri's Guile
22 Lands
1 Karakas
1 Phyrexian Tower
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath
3 Forest
2 Plains
3 Swamp
2 Bayou (actually I have overgrown tomb at this moment, but I hope that friend will lend me bayou for next tournament)
1 Scrubland
1 Savannah
15 Sideboard
2 Pithing Needle
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Gaddock Teeg
3 Lost Legacy
2 Surgical Extraction
4 Duress
1 Golgari Charm
1 Zealous Persecution
I hope that it will be better than my last version (with Dromoka- page 82)
Next week I'll get some new cards: Bojuka Bog, second Crop Rotation, Sylvan Safekeeper, second Golgari Charm and Mirri's Guile.
In my LGS are some reanimators etc., so Bojuka Bog and second Crop Rotation might be useful. Bojuka will replace basic (swamp or forest?). I'm not sure, what should be switched with second Crop Rotation
I saw some decklists running Sylvan Safekeeper, is he good? I'll try him :)
Second Golgari Charm will replace fourth Duress in the sideboard.
I really don't know, what to replace with Mirri's Guilesecond Painful Truths?
I want to try Volrath's Stronghold, before buying it. Is it worth?
Wow. Okay then. How do you generate card advantage? If you're running Guile and Rotation on top of Explorers, you're playing a lot of cards that put you down in cards compared to the opponent. You must be running a lot of Trackers or planeswalkers to draw cards. It's not like you can rely on two card combos to get the effect a Tracker gets via Courser + Guile, not when they're also vulnerable to 1 for 1 removal. You'd just trade 1 for 1 a couple times then die to Liliana / Jace / whatever threat your opponent has left in hand all game, if you aren't playing card draw and you're playing 0 for 1s like Rotation and Mirri's Guile.
Stronghold is very good.
Maybe ease up on your anti combo cards in the sideboard. I only see 9 that you could justify removing, but you have 11 to bring in.
Crop Rotation isn't a 0 for 1, if it resolves it trades 1 for 1, or you draw 2 cards off it with a Tracker, or it gets you 4 mana for 1 card, last I checked Dark Ritual was playable at a worse rate.
Crop Rotation wins games. It's one of the best cards you can have in your opener if you're racing, one of the best cards you can have if you're facing land disruption, and one of the best cards you can have if you're dealing with combo. It's versatile and powerful.
I'm interested in your list and your results with it. My latest playtesting put me off and now I'm thinking about running less dead-on-its-own-cards, like Evo leap, and instead run more gsz-targets. Id like to see your balance between disruption, threats and "combopieces"
You assume I won't listen to any theorycrafting or logic...therefore you don't have to work to provide any! Wowza, that's neat. Makes life simple for you.
Most rational people on here would like to hear something a bit more in depth than "Shutup, I tried it and it worked".
No one would seriously run Guile AND Library. They fill the exact same role, and they don't work any better when both in play. Odds are, one is better suited for that same role. By suggesting Mirri's Guile, any rational person would also reach the conclusion that you are suggesting to NOT run Library.
Edit: To any newcomers - welcome and try out Sylvan Library! It has worked for me. There we go, I've done my contributing for the day. Can't beat personal experience amirite?
So if you're facing land disruption, rather than get wastelanded you want to hold up G every turn to Rotation instead. I'm not sure how helpful that is. In that situation you're still not dealing with any pressure your opponent has, and you're spending a card in your hand to functionally leave the board the same as it was previously. Wasteland decks are either playing a Tempo plan (in which case not affecting the board means you lose) or are Lands (in which case Rotation won't help much against their disruption plan, since you are still going to lose unless you proactively pressure them, which Rotation doesn't help you do unless they misplay horribly).
Using rotation as a 5 mana divination if you have a Tracker does not impress me. Nor does using it as a Culling the Weak - Dark Ritual sees play because it accelerates you into some form of game ender immediately, which is worth the card disadvantage when it's Ad Nauseam, or Entomb/Exhume, or whatever. There's a reason fair decks don't play dark ritual, and it's because spending cards to accelerate into non-Griselbrand creatures is not good enough.
For dealing with Combo, Rotation is good against Reanimator and potentially Storm - the two combo decks against which reactive combo hate is the worst, since they play discard. You only get to hate on Storm if they decide to go for a graveyard reliant plan, and in most situations against these decks the spell is functionally similar to a discard spell, only if they don't go off next turn you slowed your ability to apply pressure by needing to hold mana up again. Rotation does very little against a Sneak Attack, nothing against Omniscience, and very little against the red Sneak decks (since you're facing down either Moon or Chalice).
A hand of Crop Rotation / Mirri's Guile / Veteran Explorer / Deathrite Shaman / 3 lands is hardly keepable and does very little against many decks. A hand of Collective Brutality / Sylvan Library / Veteran Explorer / Deathrite Shaman / 3 lands is a hand I'd rather have against basically anything.
- Against aggro/tempo decks you stabilize better and can answer some of their pressure. Rotation does nothing, at best protecting your mana while not interacting with their board.
- Against midrange decks you will end up in a grindfest either way, but Library puts you ahead on card if you need it and Brutality can clear the way of countermagic /removal when it finds you a threat. Rotation, again, does nothing.
- Against control Library is way better than Guile and actually puts you up cards, Brutality lets you force through countermagic again and Rotation does nothing unless you run Cavern (in which case it still doesn't help you against removal spells or sweepers).
- Against combo decks Brutality much more reliably prevents them going off as mentioned above, and lets you see their hand for any therapies you find, while Library lets you dig for more disruption / threats more efficiently than Guile does.
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Veteran Explorer
1 Eternal Witness
4 Academy Rector
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
3 Swords to Plowshares
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Collective Brutality
3 Pernicious Deed
1 Cast Out
1 Starfield of Nyx
1 Curse of Death's Hold
1 Dovescape
1 Overwhelming Splendor
3 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Vessel of Nascency
3 Evolutionary Leap
2 Lingering Souls
3 Forest
2 Swamp
2 Plains
1 Cavern of Souls
2 Phyrexian Tower
2 Bayou
2 Savannah
1 Scrubland
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Windswept Heath
side:
3 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Lost Legacy
2 Toxic Deluge
1 Chromanticore
1 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Thoughtseize
Arbor has made Evo Leap much more consistent. Honestly, if you get Leap + any creature, then it is very rare to lose. Vessel and starfield I'm still curious about. Could see -1 removal +1 lingering souls since souls can be similar to removal in function, and works well with vessel. Maybe I'll drop the singleton Decay in favor of a third souls.
Leyline of Sanctity in the side has seemed lackluster and I usually can't find room to board in more than 1-2 - least that was what was happening against ANT. Could take out 1-2 and add in...2nd Canonist? Ensnaring Bridge also fills a couple of oddball matchups. Chromanticore could also be replaced I guess. Will do some tinkering with the side.
I've held off on buying Stronghold for the longest time. Recently I pulled the trigger and honestly, I don't think I'll ever want to play without it anymore.
I'll be addressing your point below.
Actually enjoyed reading this. Kinda made my morning. So alright, let me put some effort into this. Here goes.
To be perfectly clear - my list runs 3 Guiles, 1 Library, no Crop Rotations, no Dark Confidants, 1 Courser of Kruphix and 1 Vizier of the Menagerie.
There's 2 major points to Guile. First off, there's card selection. It's why blue is so powerful - it makes it consistent and allows it to keep up card quality. While Brainstorm/Ponder do replace themselves, they don't generate CA - they allow blue players to maintain card quality. Guile does the same for us, with every shuffle effect (and we do a lot of shuffling) allowing us to select the best from 3 new cards rather than topdecking a fully random card. Vs. a lot of decks it's fine for us to be down 1 card, especially if we get to look at a more more cards than our opponents. A lot of decks play Wasteland - they're basically dead vs. us at least 50% of the time (being conservative here), so 50% of the time our opponents are down a card as well when they draw/have a Wasteland, basically putting us on par as far as cards are concerned while massively improving our draws. Then there's FoW - that's a 2-for-1 in our favor that we just need to bait out with the right card. This again puts us on par while massively improving our draws. And what if we're down a card? The point of Nic Fit is that its cards are more powerful and more impactful than whatever 90% of the field plays. And unlike most other decks we do run actual CA w/ our sweeper suite, ironing out any advantage our opponent might have had in the early game. As for generating actual CA w/ Guile and assorted other cards - that's mostly incidental. It's nice when it works out, but it's still fine when it isn't. Guile is mostly a tool for keeping up card quality, allowing you to build up pressure until your opponent buckles.
The second thing is card velocity. Nic Fit is a slow deck. Sometimes too slow. For this we can compensate by improving card velocity. Tone down the mana curve and even try to spread the colours of mana needed to cast spells. It's why I run Path to Exile over Abrupt Decay (cheaper and lessens the demand on specifically green mana) and why we ran SDT over stuff like Painful Truths. Falling too far behind on cards played can be devastating. And this is where Guile helps as well. Imagine one of our worst MUs - ANT/TES. Tapping out T2 to cast Sylvan Library is considerably worse than casting, say, Guile and a discard spell. Or, on T3, Guile and Ethersworn Canonist/Gaddock Teeg. The alternative is that you don't cast Library, but that means it's just a dead card in your hand. Odds of that happening w/ Guile are smaller due to the fact that it's cheaper. And then there're plenty of cases of having to choose to play either a 1 mana spell or Sylvan Library on T2. Guile will allow you to play both in some of those cases.
As for Sylvan Library drawing cards - I often don't find myself doing that until the late game. The problem is though that we need to get there first. And that's what Guile helps us achieve.
And on Pernicious Deed destroying Guile - sure, but often enough Guile will help you find Deed when you actually need it, in which case it just becomes "Sever a limb to save the whole". Replacing a Deed w/ a Toxic Deluge helps mitigate that somewhat though. It also gives you a use for multiples you might run into. I've blown up (or shuffled away) my share of Tops b/c I had a copy to spare.
That all being said, Guile just looks kinda "Meh" on paper. In this case seeing really is believing. As for anecdotal evidence, there's the game where I had Guile + Courser + Vizier out and the 1 upkeep I got with it got me nothing. And then there's the games where dropping it in the early game (T1-3) allowed me to keep up with my opponent and answering his every move in some form or another and the games (yes, plural) where a more late game Guile allowed me to go Rhino, Rhino, Rhino for the win while my opponent got stuck in topdeck limbo.
I have played rotation in the past, and I still think that in the right shell it's a nice card to have if you build around it, but I have to say that your analysis is spot on and was a nice read. Thanks for posting your detailed insight Navsi, this kind of posts it's what makes me come back in this thread.
I'm not saying card selection is not a useful effect to have. Personally I prefer actual card draw - I tend to run builds with a high threat/answer rather than utility density (equipment makes all your random 1/1s better threats, which helps) which means that the average card strength of my draws is higher, so raw draw is very useful. I also think it works well to play versatile effects (collective brutality again!) that are very rarely dead and so improve the effectiveness of draw as opposed to selection again. The nice thing about library, though, is that it is selection when you need it (finding the answer to pressure) and draw when you need it (overwhelming opponent with card advantage or multiple lock pieces).
Early game velocity is nice, but I don't think you really want to be casting either card before before turn three against combo anyway unless something has gone horribly wrong. You have a lot of other effects to be using early - 8+ discard spells, canonists, extraction effects, zeniths and hate creatures like teeg and deathrite and ooze, or applying pressure with whatever dumb beaters you haven't sideboarded out. Putting your card selection on the board is probably secondary to all of these, and usually you want to be doing so in order to refill your hand / continue to apply pressure after the initial stuff you drop, to prevent the opposition from drawing their way into more combo pieces or otherwise regaining the advantage. I don't think Library is any worse than Guile in that situation - Guile might come down a turn earlier (which is lovely) but if it does, it's probably because you're low on interaction and need something ASAP. Library is significantly more useful if you don't have a shuffle effect, since you can just draw-3 and hope to dig deeper next turn (or if the shuffle is one of the top 3).
One thing to keep in mind is that your turn 1 play is optimally used in getting to 3 mana on turn 2. That means your turn 2 play is either going to be a 3 drop or a 1 drop+2 drop. Guile opens up the possibility of 2 drop hate cards (I bet Guile+Brutality play well together), while Library limits you to 1 drops like Therapy or Thoughtseize or whatever. After playing it a bit, I haven't been too impressed with Library, I greatly prefer 1 mana manipulation because it opens the door for more powerful interaction.
Thanks. I enjoy seeing the thoughts laid out here.
Question - what's the average number of fetches that you run? Do you also run Arbor as a fetch? Maybe we play with a significant difference in shuffle effects. Lot of the time, I spend my fetches to necessarily play things that turn and don't have the time to spend checking with Library/Guile. I see shuffle effects as a potential bonus when they line up that way. Mid-to-late game I will definitely hold fetches up for that effect though. Top was such a huge loss to us, it allowed us to just go crazy with consistency at just about any point in the game - any point in the TURN for that matter.
Is there a significant difference between Library and Guile in reference to card selection? Getting a shuffle at end of opp's turn is the same for both enchantments - you see 3 different cards. Guile lets you have a shuffle effect between the check/order top 3 and drawing which allows you to draw a random card as opposed to a known bad 3. Library means you are stuck with a single enhanced draw (though I guess you could shuffle in response to its trigger too? I don't think I've ever seen anyone do that in order to see 2 different cards).
IMO, Guile has zero card advantage. You play the card, and you get no cards back. It is -only- selection. This is the key difference which I think makes Library quite a bit better. When you exhaust your shuffle effects and are at a board stall/need pressure, then Library CAN dig you deeper all on its own.
I do think Leovold is an issue with Library though - a bug heavy meta would influence my decision on running it.
Agreed about toning down cmc - I love the lower to the ground bug fit lists. I like those backed up by a ton of card advantage in order to keep up pressure though. Guile being one cheaper isn't a key factor in considering the list as lower cmc though - to me, that is doing stuff like cutting 6-drops, limiting the number of 5's, etc. Having a buttload of 1-drops does make you weaker to chalice and I've noticed a drop in matches against those decks when I do try to run more and more 1 drops.
My own background is either with bug lists or combo-centric lists. I feel that Library/Guile effects simply aren't needed when you are running 4 Strix, 3-4 Tracker, 3 Jace, x Brainstorm, etc. Sneak fit wants the ability of Library to draw multiple things and suddenly combo out. Nyx fit likewise wants that ability (think I'm trying my next league with libraries back in).
Optimally, you want to be spending 3 mana on turn 2 and then 4-5 mana on turn 5. However I don't know if this is necessarily a situation to be concerned about.
If you have 3 mana on turn two, one of three things happened:
- you Zenithed for Dryad Arbor. In this situation you probably have another Zenith in hand (so you can find Teeg now) or you need 3 mana for another specific piece of hate you're casting. Otherwise you would have waited with Zenith to make a Teeg on turn three. If you have Zenith and follow it up spending mana on library/guile, you are probably better off not casting the Zenith and holding it for X=2. In this situation, having Guile over Library does not help you.
- you cast Deathrite Shaman on turn one. In this situation, you still don't want to be spending mana on Guile or Library turn two. If you have disruption in hand you're casting it, or you're holding mana up to use Deathrite if you don't have anything else. Guile does have an advantage here (you can cast it while keeping a mana open to use Deathrite as graveyard hate) but I don't think that situation is going to be one that comes up frequently - or rather, casting Guile rather than holding up Library doesn't make that much difference to your game plan. You'd rather be casting disruption than either of them, still.
- you cast Explorer and Therapy, so now you have 3 mana available. In this situation you are probably happy to play either card, since you just cast two Cabal Therapies and your opponent is unlikely to go off and kill you immediately if you just flashbacked therapy, so you have a turn to dig for more disruption either way, and Library is better at actually getting you enough disruption to keep the opponent locked for long enough to actually kill them before they go off. You might be happier going explorer - therapy - guile + threat than you are going explorer - therapy - library/threat - pass turn - library/threat, but I'm not sure what I would prefer between a one turn faster clock and 2+ more cards in hand to disrupt / pressure with.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Reply With Quote