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If the plan is to move towards Ballistas and Sun Titan and lean more on white, might it be reasonable to move towards Eladamri's Call instead of GSZ? It's an extra mana the-turn-of and reduces the surprise factor, but gets every creature in the deck which would allow for more bullets and little synergies like Mephidross (not him specifically necessarily but just as an example). GSZ is a sacred cow in the deck, but desperate times and whatnot...
If you want to play Ballista or other mana sinks, have you considered Recruiter of the Guard? It puts a lot fewer deckbuilding restrictions on us compared to Traverse, lets us tutor nongreen cards earlier (barring nut draws for delirium) and is a 2-for-1 with synergy with Therapy.
Is recruiter a good enough body? That's why I like Ranger of Eos.
As promised earlier, here's a first pass at a list, largely based off the logic I laid out a couple posts up:
Land 22
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Windswept Heath
1 Ash Barrens
2 Bayou
2 Savannah
4 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Plains
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Karakas
1 Bojuka Bog
Spells 19
1 Fatal Push
2 Path to Exile
2 Crop Rotation
4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Collective Brutality
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Vindicate
Planeswalker 3
2 Liliana of the Veil
1 Garruk Relentless
Enchantment 3
3 Pernicious Deed
Creatures 14
4 Veteran Explorer
1 Deathrite Shaman
3 Walking Ballista
1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
1 Spike Feeder
1 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
1 Archangel of Thune
1 Sun Titan
1 Verduous Gearhulk
Will post thoughts later once I digest a bit, but VHulk is a 5-drop, not 6.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brael
what do you think about The Scarab God in nic fit?
http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=16595&d=302622&f=LE
Any thoughts on this sex pile?
Living Plane + Curse of Death's Hold might be the sexiest thing I've seen.
It does way too little for a 5 drop, and forces you into blue. Also, it forces you into running a bunch of zombies.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nilsfit
Yeah it's been discussed a couple times - Nyx Fit is a build that's currently under development. Common consensus is that Living Plane is a cool card but too underwhelming on its own, when Dovescape locks similarly hard without being as useless on its own.Quote:
Originally Posted by itrytostorm
Tournament report:Quote:
Originally Posted by itrytostorm
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...=1#post1021374
I've been tinkering with a Delirium/Traverse the Ulvenwald build and have come to this:
CREATURES
4 Walking Ballista
4 Veteran Explorer
1 Brain Maggot
1 Grim Flayer
2 Eternal Witness
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Palace Jailer
1 Ishkanah, Graf Widow
1 Thragtusk
1 Sun Titan
SPELLS
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Fatal Push
1 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Oath of Nissa
3 Traverse the Ulvenwald
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Liliana, the Last Hope
3 Pernicious Deed
1 Toxic Deluge
LAND
4 Forest
2 Plains
2 Swamp
2 Bayou
1 Karakas
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Savannah
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Volrath's Stronghold
2 Windswept Heath
The main differentiation in my list is Oath of Nissa. These were originally Green Sun's, but I just wasn't running enough green creatures to make them worthwhile. GSZ also makes hitting delirium a bit harder, as resolving it means you're shuffling it back in rather than adding an instant to your yard. Oath of Nissa helps add a type for delirium and is kind of a midpoint between GSZ and Traverse. I've also had the clause of being able to cast planeswalkers using any color of mana be relevant against Blood Moon decks, allowing Liliana to come online, which gives you an outlet to kill Veteran Explorer and get any basics you may need to solve your mana problems. Oath digging for planeswalkers is pretty nice too. I've been running a Garruk Relentless in the board, and it's great to have increased access to him.
The other cards that may be questionable are Brain Maggot and Grim Flayer. Maggot is primarily there to be a speed bump and add another enchantment to the deck to enable delirium. Flayer is a potential GSZ target and the library/graveyard manipulation he provides can be pretty powerful; you can dump things into the yard for recursion with Liliana or Sun Titan and you can set up the top of your library, which comes in handy when Palace Jailer has made you the Monarch (drawing Fatal Push or Abrupt Decay heading into the opponent's turn feels good).
I'm fairly new to Nic Fit as an archetype, but I like the versatility of it. Sun Titan has long been a pet card and its interaction with Liliana, the Last Hope is everything I could ask for.
I'd turn Maggot into DRS/ScOoze and Flayer into QPM.
I'm not sure if cutting GSZ is the right way to go. It's there so you cam run fewer creatures, but consistently have the right ones. If you mean to cut those you might have to drop the entire creature skeleton idea.
Not running Zenith means you can not reasonably expect to be getting explorer triggers before turn three with any form of reliability, which means you can't reasonably afford to be running cards that cost 5-6 mana and not expect them to rot in your hand a reasonable percentage of the time. You want at least eight sources of turn one-two mana acceleration or the deck just won't consistently do anything. Alternatively massively cut down on expensive cards, but at that point you might as well be playing DRS over Explorer and some other flavor of BGx midrange instead.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Echelon
After playing a few more matches, I was considering swapping the Maggot for a DRS as well. I'm not sure if the concerns about the lack of GSZ making Explorer less consistent and therefore making the high end of the deck unreachable are really accurate. GSZ lets you tap out on turn 2 to get an Explorer into play. In that scenario, I could have cast Oath of Nissa on turn 1 to find an Explorer and then turn two I can get the Explorer into play and still have a mana open (possibly to cast Therapy and then sac the Explorer, opening me up for 2 additional mana right away). Also, the high end of my build isn't that high. I'm only playing 3 cards at CMC 5-6. I acknowledge that GSZ is more consistent than Oath for getting your 1-drop by turn 2, but I think Oath trades for some different upsides. Against Sneak and Show, for example, I really like Oath, as you can get Palace Jailer into your hand to stave off the opponent's SNT. All this being said, I'll probably try to squeeze in one more GSZ. Basically, between GSZ, Traverse, and Oath, I think 8 total feels ideal. Maybe I'll trim an Oath for another GSZ.Quote:
Originally Posted by Navsi
If you didn't draw an Explorer in your opening hand, Oath of Nissa has a 21% chance of finding you an Explorer. That's just not good enough - keeping a hand which needs Explorer to function (which is not unlikely) on the basis of Oath finding you a copy is a losing proposition. You can't base mulligan decisions on Oath finding you an Explorer - you can base mulligan decisions on Zenith finding you Explorer, which makes an enormous amount of difference.Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainTwiddle
Running Zenith practically guarantees you won't be getting any sorceries into the GY though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Navsi
This does seem valid. GSZ also helps in matchups against Chalice of the Void decks, so I'll definitely be looking to up my count. Thank you for the insight.Quote:
Originally Posted by Navsi
Unless it gets countered, but yes. Collective Brutality also helps.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brael
Personally I suspect the best Delirium build is a BUG one which only cares about card types in the yard in the lategame for casting Emrakul, which means we can afford to be slower to put card types in the graveyard. I am of the opinion that trying to make Traverse work (bar something super weird like Zenith getting banned) is something of a trap for us. Making Traverse work in an Explorer/Therapy shell is very hard, because Explorer is only a good card if we can play more than 4 earlygame copies (and so Traverse doesn't help with that) and Therapy, the other half of our core engine, also doesn't feed Traverse.
I tried the exact list with the following changesQuote:
Originally Posted by Arianrhod
-1 Kambal -1 Eternal Witness -1 Palace Jailer +1 Scavenging Ooze +1 Siege Rhino +1 Tireless Tracker
Thoughts
On MTGO the deck ran quite smoothly. I like it. I like the Ishkanah Karakas interaction :cool:
On paper. Would like to point out that me paper meta has a whole boatload of gravehate. Minimally 4 gravehate in sb.
- G1s, fantastic with the deck doing what it does. I like how the 4 Traverse makes it very hard for me to flood or screw on lands, being able to grab either Tower feels really great.
- Sideboarded games, this is where the wheels of delirium came off. Leyline of the Void punishes both the Explorer core and the delirium side of the deck, drawing Traverse felt like drawing a basic land :o Other common gravehate such as Surgical Extractions also came down to spoil the delirium fun times.
Overall I love the deck and its concept, but I feel it is quite bad if your meta is like mine where graveyard decks are everywhere. (I got like 2 dredges, 2 reanimators and couple of LFTL decks who come play on a consistent basis)
I'm going to try Nyx Fit for fun. Have you guys played with Nissa, Voice of Zendikar already? It seems decent: puts blockers on the board, synergy with Leap and low cmc.
My main concern with this deck is the lack of means of CA. On paper it seems like the deck will go on top deck mode fast and lose from that point, I hope I'm wrong.