I think punishing fire would shut down viald.decks and batterskull.decks and also wg. But this deck is has a lot of tools to adapt to the right metagame and we should see what happens.
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Ever since I played against freakish777 at GP Columbus, I've always considered this to be a tier one deck, even though it's never been universally recognized as such (truth be told, I've never fully understood why anyone was running NO RUG these past few months instead of an altered version of this deck. Jace just seems like a superior 4cmc wincon to Natural Order). With Dismember, a card that can potentially kill off this deck's number one enemy, Knight of the Reliquary, and Snapcaster Mage as new additions, this deck probably just got even better. An early draft of a post-Misstep, post-Innistrad list:
3 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
2 Island
2 Polluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Flooded Strand
4 Wasteland
2 Mishra's Factory
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Snapcaster Mage
2 Vendilion Clique
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor (had been 2 Jace, 1 iteration of Control Magic, but Jace is just better)
4 Force of Will
4 Stifle
3 Daze
2 Spell Pierce (or Spell Snare)
4 Brainstorm
2 Ponder
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Fire//Ice
1 Dismember
1 Life from the Loam (I'd been running Crucible of Worlds for many months while testing in 2010, but this actually seems superior)
I am very interested in this deck. Is the snapcaster mage really that good in this deck? And is the trinket mage package too janky in the current metagame?
Just to let everyone know this list is far from dead. I won an 86 person Jupiter games tournament with my updated list, and it has some spicy options. I went 5-0-2 in the Swiss, so I didn't lose a single match all day. Expect a tourney report to pop up later today.
Nicely done Eric, looking forward to a decklist and a report of course.
The report is finally up. It's a bit long winded, but I guess that happens when you play (or draw) literally every single round. Hope it shines some light on what I think the new stage of NLT should look like. I'll also be editing the first post in the thread to make light of the changes (in particular how unbelievely insane snapcaster is in this deck).
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...452#post595452
How does this deck pair against Reanimator? Which cards are weaker? Which are stronger? How would the maindeck be tailored against a metagame with close to 20% Reanimator, and 15% combo?
EDIT: Just thought of one card: Curfew, which turns on Snapcaster Mage and Clique once more.
This deck against reanimator is ok, but not insane. I'd say reanimator has a slight edge in game 1, but after sideboard you have a ton of options against them so I think it swings a bit in your favor games 2 and 3. The bolts and fire//ice are obviously not that fantastic here, but all the countermagic is nice (obv). Chaos warp is also super spicy against them, since they have only like a 7% chance of hitting another dude off of it. After sb you get spell pierces, REBs for their counters and their jins, and the graveyard hate of course. The phantasmal image can do some work, along with gilded drake. If someone play Sphinx and thinks that's game, you just steal it and laugh at them. For making the main more tuned to fight combo, I'd take out one of the removal spells and add one more counterspell in. Maybe something like a spell pierce or the like.
So what is this deck weak against? What are its bad matchups?
Every deck that plays Knight of the Reliquary.
That is not entirely accurate.
First off, there are a lot of tangible answers for Knight that this deck has access to play. Gilded Drake, Submerge, Dismember, Jace, various counters and depending on the NLT player's selected graveyard hate, crypt and then bolt or lavamancer, or just surgically extract Knight.
Knight in and of herself is far from an auto lose for this deck, especially post board. Stating that one creature is this decks inherent weakness is rather askew. Put another way, there is kryptonite to answer this ostensible achilles heel.
Nearly card for card NLT featured at GP Amsterdam, and made T32 at the event.
Was NLT a good choice for a metagame defined by Reanimator, ANT, Merfolk, Can Thresh, and Maverick representing nearly 30% of the total metagame?
Eric, how'd you end up after the feature match? Any changes you would make?
I end up in 32nd place (12-4) at GP Amsterdam after going 12-1. Little report following soon.
I finished in 19th, going 6-2-1. Definitely should of gone 7-2 at least, I screwed up against David Price and got an unintentional draw where I should of won the match. I also screwed up against Van Lunen on camera in game 2, where I'm pretty sure I I play right we go to game 3. The deck is still really good, I just want to get the 22nd land in so that you have your mana more reliably.
Just a quick aside apart from the deck's current construction, but would anyone be interested if I wrote an article going into the finer details of playing this deck? I've had a lot of opinions floating around in my head from the past weekend, especially from talking to a ton of the semi-pros about my deck while I was playing in Baltimore. The deck also seems to be getting a bit more popular due to it's recent results, and I'd like to share everything I've learned while playing the deck.