[Primer] Nic Fit

It's very strong, but it also requires a 2 card combo in the opening hand (A+B), so it won't happen that often.

You can boost the chances a bit. Once Upon A Time helps with turn 1 Veteran. Green Sun's Zenith helps with turn 2 Veteran.

Flare is harder to get in hand turn 1-2. It's a bad topdeck (Kodama's Reach is unplayable) and bad in multiples, so is 4 copies too many? Maybe 2-3?

Either way, this combo won't happen consistently. If you build a mana hungry deck around 5+ lands, you're in trouble if you don't draw it or if they Force/Solitude Veteran first. The deck should also be functional without big mana.

Those were the principles around the brew I posted above. It has a lot of plays with alternate costs (Grief, Troll, Endurance, OuaT, Flare, FoV) and X costs (GSZ, Fiend Artisan) so it can work on low mana but also scales up to better plays on more lands. I also ran a lot of ways to find early Veteran (OuaT, GSZ) but didn't go up to 4 Flare. The deck felt powerful with a mix of early interaction and lategame advantage.

Beans is another possible direction. FoW, Lorien, Leyline Binding, Solitude.... But Veteran + Therapy/Flare takes up a lot of space, so is there room to fit enough Beans stuff?

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Originally Posted by Clark Kant

Youre not kidding. That is an insane card for Nic Fit. Using AI to create and test MTG decks seems to be playing out well for WOTC (though I doubt its sustainable for very long). GSZ for Vet Explorer turn 2 becomes worthwhile with this card.

With so much mana, I think we need to adopt Beanstalk and either blue for FoW/Lorien Revealed or if not blue then atleast white for Solitude/Leyline Binding.

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Triumph of Saint Katherine Instead of Solitude

There are lots of options for extra sac effects and green creatures though. It’s not just a 4 of + 4 of situation like the others.

Veridian Emmissary
Satyr Wayfinder
Mosswood Dreadknight
Arboreal Grazer
Ice-Fang Coatl
Are all additional green sac fodder,

And on top of cabal therapy and the new card you have the gsz creature.

Getting the green creature is easy. I experimented with Ignoble Hierarch too (bad in a Bowmasters meta). There's also GSZ for Dryad arbor, etc.

The limiting factor is getting Flare of Cultivation. Nic Fit doesn't have natural ways to help draw that. You could play Brainstorm in a BUG shell. There's also the issue of the 2nd Flare being bad.

The problem is turn 2 5 lands needs exactly Veteran + Flare + no disruption from opponent. If you have dork + Flare or Veteran + sac, you're down 2 lands, so you can't really build a curve around consistent 5+ mana. So it's safer to build a lower curve with mana sinks than to rely on turn 2 5 lands.

Why not run culling the meek if the goal is consistent 5 mana on t2

You could. That would lead to a more combo-y build, because you only get 1 play at 5 mana instead of 5 basics in play. It'd be sad to Culling the Weak into a big creature just to eat Daze/FoW/StP, then be back to low mana next turn.

The brew I tested (end of last page) consistently got to 5-6 lands, sometimes 8 lands, regularly running out of basics. It just took longer than T2. If the deck is OK playing a grindier game depending on how fast you ramp, then it's fine.

If you go all-in on ramping fast, you probably want some kind of combo payoff. Or something uncounterable like Carnage Tyrant.

I think you should check the video I linked and consider the reflections I provide on the archetype's strengths and weaknesses, especially if you happen to be relatively new to the deck. Nic Fit's problem has never been that it doesn't ramp enough, in my experience (and this is a perspective that can be discussed, but this is what I've concluded), as Reeplcheep mentions there's already Culling the Weak and many other options to do more ramping, but that approach tends to just emphasize the weaknesses I discussed. If you can find some very powerful threats to ramp into, then maybe it can be made to work well, but again this is something we already could be doing and that hasn't been very relevant in the past. As discussed by Isvan/Navsi in the Nic Fit Discord, perhaps the Scapeshift Nic Fit version is the one that most benefits from more ramping spells, because that deck wins by putting 7 lands into play. I haven't played that version much myself, I got the cards and played it once but it was a too linear approach for my taste. I don't know which other version would benefit from a change into more ramp spells. I'm thinking if you play expensive planeswalkers and Arena Rector, then perhaps that could be a good enough payoff for the extra ramping.

I have been thinking about Culling the Weak recently, it's quite possible there is some brewing space with it and with this new card, but I suspect it'll just make existing problems of the archetype worse. Edit: I actually suggested it recently as a potenital sideboard card to bring in to be more explosive against decks that don't play force of will. In the past, the Veteran-Storm combo deck used Culling the Weak, I find that archetype very exciting and interesting but I haven't been able to put together a version that seems promising.

Edit: to provide some self-reflection, I think that's what it is, I could be undervaluing this new rampspell. My thinking is basically that it seems like it's not better than Veteran, it's a toned-down version of Veteran for Modern so I don't expect it to be better. It's never card advantage, you just trade two cards into two lands, and it just ramps one land. A big difference with Veteran is that you can't tutor for it, at least not efficiently. However, you don't ramp the opponent when you cast it, which is an advantage, and new ramping spells do open for new types of decks. I'm specifically thinking of how Orcish Lumberjacks spawned the Lumberjacks deck, which usually has some overlap with Nic Fit. I mean, it's possible this card can also create new opportunities for ramping.

Thanks for the comments.

I watched your videos earlier. They were one reason my brew was focused on card advantage creatures, avoiding bad topdecks (a point you raised), and not being all-in on the extra ramp. 2-3 Flare seemed enough.

I liked your use of Fiend Artisan. It'a a sac outlet, it's a cheap threat, and the X tutors scale well depending on how well you ramped. I also liked the 1-of Meren and Recurring Nightmare as lategame engines and took those from you.

With the additional ramp cards, I was very impressed by Tireless Tracker as an out when you get flooded.

Against explosive decks without FoW, I think Grief and Endurance are better than Culling. You could just stop them instead of powering out a 6/6 that may not race their explosive plays. They also fit the creature synergies and become threats later.

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Originally Posted by FTW

Thanks for the comments.

I watched your videos earlier. They were one reason my brew was focused on card advantage creatures, avoiding bad topdecks (a point you raised), and not being all-in on the extra ramp. 2-3 Flare seemed enough.

I liked your use of Fiend Artisan. It'a a sac outlet, it's a cheap threat, and the X tutors scale well depending on how well you ramped. I also liked the 1-of Meren and Recurring Nightmare as lategame engines and took those from you.

With the additional ramp cards, I was very impressed by Tireless Tracker as an out when you get flooded.

Against explosive decks without FoW, I think Grief and Endurance are better than Culling. You could just stop them instead of powering out a 6/6 that may not race their explosive plays. They also fit the creature synergies and become threats later.

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I see, and thanks for watching btw! I liked the suite you suggested of Titania, Tracker and Meren I believe (iirc), and RN+Meren+Witness. Grief and Endurance seem great, agreed on that part (I see them as your potential FoWs in a non-blue deck, while also being good when cast without evoke against slower decks, subtle difference but I guess both perspectives are valid).

I think my point here is that while playing good grinding cards with synergy like the ones you mention, you also need to work on reducing dead topdecks, and adding more ramp-spells is the opposite of that. It thins the deck of relevant interaction which seems to be an inherent weakness of the deck - unless you're ramping into something much more powerful than what your opponent is playing and assuming they can't answer it easily. And that has been difficult probably since Sigarda stopped being a great threat (edit: well, Titania with support does a good job but it doesn't single-handedly sail through the opponent's defenses with them unable to put up resistance like Sigarda used to do), but now with Murktide being a larger threat for 2 mana than any of the Nic Fit threats it's even more the case, similarly ramping into Deed hasn't been a game-ending move since planeswalkers were printed as great threats and sweeping Murktide with Deed is also quite difficult. But well, it's never wrong to test things, and like I seem to come back to, Titania with Safekeeper is a wincon that is difficult for the opponent to interact with, wins in one turn and may be worth ramping harder into - which is what Applejacks does, that's probably good brewing territory.

Sorry if I'm writing excessively and missing some main points!

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Originally Posted by pettdan

I think my point here is that while playing good grinding cards with synergy like the ones you mention, you also need to work on reducing dead topdecks, and adding more ramp-spells is the opposite of that. It thins the deck of relevant interaction which seems to be an inherent weakness of the deck - unless you're ramping into something much more powerful than what your opponent is playing and assuming they can't answer it easily. And that has been difficult probably since Sigarda stopped being a great threat (edit: well, Titania with support does a good job but it doesn't single-handedly sail through the opponent's defenses with them unable to put up resistance like Sigarda used to do), but now with Murktide being a larger threat for 2 mana than any of the Nic Fit threats it's even more the case

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Good points. I see you went down to 1 Veteran to really minimize dead topdecks.

I was curious if the ramp plan is still viable if you don't go overboard, the motivation for my build: 4 Veteran 2 Flare. Reeplcheep's Flare suggestion looked strong.

Although these are bad topdecks, each thins 2 lands out of the deck. Lands are also bad topdecks. Arguably thinning multiple lands reduces the % of bad draws overall. Especially when you can cheat down to 18 lands (helped by Troll and OuaT) and still play 4-5 cmc threats, due to 6 0-1 cmc cards that give +2 basics. I've never had so many lands in play with an 18 land deck vs Daze + Wasteland opponent! In testing I was often running out of mana-producing lands in the deck, which means drawing more business. So it's just a pivot to topdecking more ramp but less land, instead of topdecking more land.

Lumberjacks is another fast ramp, but like Culling it doesn't thin the deck and leaves you with few resources if the big thing is answered. I like that Nic Fit can just spam out 5 basics and have reliable mana over many turns.

Tireless Tracker is a good hedge against draws with too many lands/ramp cards. It bailed me out once producing 6+ clues (extra ramp and topdeck fetches -> clues -> cards ).

Re Murktides: I usually had to save Trophy for them or threaten to race with higher power on the ground. It is tough to beat other than hard removal. Titania is good. It represents 10-15 power when played. Even if opponent has 8/8 Murktide and Bolt, they may need to play defensively, while you eventually go wide around it.

Another option is to play that green Soulbond deathtouch creature and bond it with Orcish Bowmasters to create a deathtouch pinger. Might be good tech. Without Bowmasters, Soulbond Deathtouch also helps throw smaller creatures into opponent's defenses.

Do you know of any other resilient bigger mana payoffs that would help?

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Originally Posted by FTW

Do you know of any other resilient bigger mana payoffs that would help?

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I haven't tried in nicfit, but Hexdrinker and tasigur are generally great at being both low-investment when things go wrong, while being able to completely dominate the game if you have the mana to spare.

Good choices. Forgot about Hexdrinker. Will try both.

Edit: Nightshade Peddler is the card I was thinking of. Could run 1 copy. Combos with Bowmaster for deathtouch pinger. Lets random dorks trade up against Murktide. Sacrifice fodder otherwise.

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Originally Posted by FTW

Good choices. Forgot about Hexdrinker. Will try both.

Edit: Nightshade Peddler is the card I was thinking of. Could run 1 copy. Combos with Bowmaster for deathtouch pinger. Lets random dorks trade up against Murktide. Sacrifice fodder otherwise.

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If you run Peddler as GSZ target, then how about a few copies of Walking Ballista, too? Can be used similiar to Bowmasters to kill your Vetex (although that might be a tad bit much of card disadvantage) and it's a scalable threat/mana sink that can clean the board from pretty much anything when paired with Peddler.

Edit: Mawloc would also work as removal/scalable threat, assuming you run red. GSZ-able, but can't shoot your own Vetex.

Red would also offer the combo of Chaos Defiler + Recurring Nightmare.

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Originally Posted by FTW

Do you know of any other resilient bigger mana payoffs that would help?

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I brought up the best options I had in the video, Titania, which is the best option for a long time, which is why it spawns new archetypes like Lumberjacks (and Jund Nic Fit with Greater Gargadon). But it needs synergies to be really strong. And Recurring Nightmare, as I discuss in the video, and well perhaps the grinding engine mentioned here and in the video. As Barook mentions, Mawloc seems good with red splash. Defiler is certainly interesting, but it's more difficult to tutor for so it's more difficult to depend on it. Also it's more of a removal tool than a game-winning threat in itself, perhaps. Up the Beanstalk perhaps, it helps you refuel, it's worth experimenting with. I mean, with Beanstalk, any expensive card or most pitch-elementals or GSZs draw you new cards.

Edit: now, Recurring Nightmare can often be a liability, if it's in your starting hand, chances are it will take a long time to get some use out of it. Especially now that Scam strategies are so popular. And that's pretty much why I only run 1 copy, you want to topdeck into it and not see it too early. It's something of a pet card for me, but unlike many other cards, it scales well with mana. You can already use it at 3 mana to bring back for example a Solitude or Eternal Witness, and you can keep doing that until the opponent manages to stop it. It's a card advantage engine that starts working at 3 mana and that scales with mana available. You can also use it to get more Veteran triggers if the first one isn't enough. But sometimes when tested, it's just too inefficient, so maybe that's the case. My list is full of creatures with etb effects, and since you can pitch Solitude and Grief early, you're fairly likely to have a target for it early in the game. It brings back threats, it brings back Troll and Ent, it brings back hatebears, it brings back Coatl/Witness for card advantage, it brings back Spider/Shriekmaw/Solitude/Defiler for removal. It's banned in commander for a reason. I started being really high on RN when Oko was reigning Legacy, because it was one of few threats that ignored Oko and could just overrun Oko by removing it and then bringing back any creatures that Oko elked with new etb triggers for card advantage. And I've been kind of sold on it since then. Well, it was awesome before too, but I guess the amount of creatures printed with etb triggers on them has really escalated, making the card even more useful. RN + Witness seems awesome. If they answer your RN, you can GSZ for Witness to bring it back. However, Ephemerate + Witness has a similar effect, and Ephemerate is only 1 mana, so it's possible that Ephemerate is more powerful. RN scales better with more mana though, and is more difficult to interact with.

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Originally Posted by FTW

I was curious if the ramp plan is still viable if you don't go overboard, the motivation for my build: 4 Veteran 2 Flare. Reeplcheep's Flare suggestion looked strong.

Although these are bad topdecks, each thins 2 lands out of the deck. Lands are also bad topdecks. Arguably thinning multiple lands reduces the % of bad draws overall. Especially when you can cheat down to 18 lands (helped by Troll and OuaT) and still play 4-5 cmc threats, due to 6 0-1 cmc cards that give +2 basics. I've never had so many lands in play with an 18 land deck vs Daze + Wasteland opponent! In testing I was often running out of mana-producing lands in the deck, which means drawing more business. So it's just a pivot to topdecking more ramp but less land, instead of topdecking more land.

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I think you have a perspecive here that needs to be reflected upon. Veteran is dead topdeck in the lategame because you can't leverage more lands (for most of the threats being played, 5-6 mana is enough and one Veteran trigger is probably enough for that, you tend to draw a couple of lands from the top of the library), and also because even if you get more lands that Veteran did nothing to affect the board state. So when you die because you topdeck one or several of the 8 Veterans/Therapies (+whatever new ramp spells you are discussing adding to the deck), it doesn't help that you would reduce the chance of later drawing lands. Also, losing a card is not worth it to achieve deck thinning, I don't think that's a productive approach, and I don't recall this being an important aspect of deck building. Quite the opposite, I've seen many people argue that deck-thinning is overrated. I think building the deck with a large amount of dead late-game topdecks is a deck-building approach that i think a control deck that hopes to get to the late-game should try to avoid and try to put into something useful (that's what I tried to achieve with the suggested changes), and deck-thinning isn't a substitute. I see how it seems like similar concepts but don't treat these two things interchangeably.

So in short: avoid playing late-game dead topdecks in a deck that tries to get to the late-game and win there; deck-thinning is not an ample substitute for playing dead cards in the late-game. Well, if you could cut say 10 cards from the deck with an explorer trigger, then it might be a consideration, but at 2 cards it's not worth losing a card in hand for it. -But if you do play 4 Veterans (and 4 Therapies with little late-game synergies), make sure the threats you ramp into will be worth ramping into, such as producing an army of 5-6 5/3 creatures when Titania hits the battlefield or a Craterhoof that attacks with a team of 5/5 tramplers or an Atraxa that gives 5-6 new cards and blocks with lifelink. Perhaps also make sure it isn't answered by a single Leyline Binding or Force of Will. (edit: and by that last sentence, I mean that 4 Therapies isn't enough interaction in your deck to reliably resolve your expensive wincon, if you depend heavily on ramping and play many expensive threats that make ramping worthile, you don't want your opponent trading 1-for-1 with you, FoW is easily hardcast once you gave your opponent 2-4 basics, and even if they 1-for-2 you by pitching to FoW, your low threat density probably makes that an ok exchange for them. Instead, look at uncounterable wincons, Cavern of Souls and/or extra discard to complement Therapy)

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Originally Posted by FTW

I see you went down to 1 Veteran to really minimize dead topdecks.

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Yes, exactly, that's one of the main points I try to make in the video, reducing Veterans. I probably didn't discuss it much because it's fairly straightforward, but still deserves a motivation.

If you want to ramp into several 5-6 drops, then you may need 4 Veterans, like in a Titania-focused list with 4 Titania, but if you run 1-2 top end creatures to GSZ for, you can play 95% of your deck without getting a Veteran trigger. With 4 GSZs, that's 5 virtual copies of Veteran, which is more than what you have of say Therapy. If you play more interaction, you are more likely to survive until you topdeck a GSZ so you can do that ramping if you really need to. Usually you can just draw into lands you need, like with all other decks, so the Veteran trigger is a tool you can bring out of the deck in the matchups where it actually gives you an edge, and ignore it in the matchups where it is a liability. Edit: this approach leverages the value of GSZ as a tutor and reduces the risk of drawing dead, unwanted, extra Veterans, it also maximizes interaction with the opponent.

Edit: I don't think anyone should put 4 Veterans in a deck without strongly considering if their deck actually leverages them well. Here's a simple test: consider the 4 Veterans in your list as 4 extra lands when looking at your list. Are you happy with that land count? If not, maybe you should reconsider, because in most lists, Veterans are only transferred into lands, that's what they do. Any creature can sacrifice to a Therapy if needed, but Veteran can only find lands. You can play a bunch of creatures with ETB triggers that leave a body to sacrifice to Therapy. Say your list has 22 lands and 4 Veterans. That's equivalent to running 26 lands, pretty much. If you don't want to run a 60-card list with 26 lands, because it gives you too many dead topdecks, then maybe the same is true for 22 lands + 4 Veterans. If you add Therapy to that, you suddenly have a list with 30 dead late-game topdecks. Tell me which competitive Legacy decks that play a control strategy that play 30 dead late-game dopdecks? And if you add say 2 copies of the new ramp-spell, suddenly you're playing 32 dead late-game topdecks. Now if you for example run an equipment package, then those extra Veterans can actually be turned into threats. I think that's the kind of deck-building decisions you need to be aware of when putting 4 Veterans in the deck.

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Originally Posted by FTW

Lumberjacks is another fast ramp, but like Culling it doesn't thin the deck and leaves you with few resources if the big thing is answered. I like that Nic Fit can just spam out 5 basics and have reliable mana over many turns.

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I think you're overrating deck thinning, it's not bad but also it's not something you normally should design your deck around. Orc lets you cast t2 Titania, that wins games. Deck thinning with Veteran doesn't win games. But if you win the game by getting 5 basics out of the deck with multiple Veteran triggers, please tell us after you've had ample experience executing this game plan. I haven't, been trying since around 2013 I think. Edit: what I mean is that it's been difficult to build a very good Nic Fit list, and one reason is that there are many dead topdecks and not much library manipulation to potentially compensate for it, also the spells you ramp into aren't perhaps always worth playing a ramp strategy for, and especially my point in this secion is that those 5 extra basics you get through Veteran triggers will leave you with probably 8-9 lands in play, how are you leveraging those extra lands to make it worth sacrificing cards in hand and reactive spells while having 5-6 lands in play? Most lists don't, I believe. The Cloudpost Fit deck felt really powerful, for example, so there could be some very good versions, it's just that it has been difficult for me, and everyone else too judging from tournament results.

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Originally Posted by FTW

Tireless Tracker is a good hedge against draws with too many lands/ramp cards. It bailed me out once producing 6+ clues (extra ramp and topdeck fetches -> clues -> cards ).

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Yeah, I like Tracker, I think I commented on it in my last post. Everyone was playing Tracker in their Nic Fit lists when it was released, then they stopped for some reason (edit: too many lightning bolts? Too many Hullbreachers (or Narset)? Too inefficient? I don't remember). I put it recently in a Cloudpost list, it's really good there. Playing a couple of Trackers is not something that fully compensates for jamming a bunch of dead late-game topdecks, but it is probably a good start. There's nothing preventing you from compensating for those late-game topdecks, while also playing those trackers. Edit: but a lands theme with Titania, Safekeeper, Tracker(s), maybe Primeval Titan, maybe also Meren, maybe Ramunap Excavator, this approach is pretty synergetic with Veteran and strong, it could be correct to play 3-4 Veterans there, I just don't remember seeing good tournament results with it but I encourage experimentation.

Edit: by the way, sorry if I seem overconfident on these issues, I understand they are worth discussing in great detail. For me, these are thoughts that have matured over many years, I started experimenting with this type of deck building around 2016 iirc (cutting Veterans, building with a lower curve; maybe earlier too, I just remember a Siege Rhino Maverick/Nic Fit list I tested), but I guess I moved into other decks around then. So it seems clear to me, but it won't be to others, and sometimes it's just pet ideas that aren't actually that good. But I think it's a good idea to analyze which weaknesses a deck has and try to compensate for them in deck buildling, or leverage them to the maximum. And I think that's what I've done, identified and described a weakness, now it's up to others to consider how to compensate for the weaknesses or how to leverage their strengths to the best of our ability. I've suggested some approaches, but there will be many many more.

It's a bit ironic that a succinct message, don't play bad topdecks in a deck that tries to get to topdecking, takes so many words to defend or explain. The simplest arguments are sometimes most difficult to explain. But I guess there were several adjacent topics covered as well. Now this is what happens when I'm writing with a keyboard.

Hey, it's been a while since I last posted in this thread.
Glad to see there are still some actions.

What I'm going to say is partial and subjective but this is my feeling.

For me the printing of the new "flare of cultivation" has only one goal:
To be able to build a Nic Fit deck without relying on black (cabal therapy).

This is something I've ever wanted. Being able to get rid of the black color. Not that it is not good. It's just to have more options (and less bad draw as the game advances; Cabal therapy is losing strenght) and not being forced playing Veteran + Cabal therapy.

I have no clue at all if it will work or not but I think it might be worth trying.

Here is a small draft of a Temur Nic Fit.
I've been spending the last 3/4 weeks back testing it and it is not half-bad.

1 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Taiga
1 Tropical Island
1 Misty Rainforest
3 Snow-Covered Island
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
4 Snow-Covered Forest
4 Prismatic Vista

1 Samut, Voice of Dissent
1 Whiptongue Hydra
1 Cragplate Baloth
1 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
1 Elder Gargaroth
1 Archon of Valor's Reach
1 Elderscale Wurm
1 Atraxa, Grand Unifier
1 Indominus Rex, Alpha
3 Endurance
4 Veteran Explorer
4 Ice-Fang Coatl

3 Punishing Fire
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will

2 Flare of Cultivation
4 Green Sun's Zenith

1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Teferi, Time Raveler
1 Grist, the Hunger Tide

1) GSZ into Indominus to get rid of cards you cannot play is pretty sick
2) Endurance will let you put back the creatures you've discarded in your library
3) GSZ into Atraxa is real
4) My personal record is 6 counters on Indominus (flying, trample, double strike, haste, hexproof, vigilance)

Keep-up the flame/flare, guys !

Ralf

Well, it seems like a promising approach, Ralf. Not my approach, but I think either we scale down on CMC and play less Veterans, or the other approach would be to keep 4 Veterans and play more impactful creatures which is well the eternal promise of the Nic Fit archetype to all brewers out there. Seems like it could be very clunky but well it might also work out well. Let us know how it goes!

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Originally Posted by pettdan

Well, it seems like a promising approach, Ralf. Not my approach, but I think either we scale down on CMC and play less Veterans, or the other approach would be to keep 4 Veterans and play more impactful creatures which is well the eternal promise of the Nic Fit archetype to all brewers out there. Seems like it could be very clunky but well it might also work out well. Let us know how it goes!

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I think we are already scaling down with "do nothing" cards.

4 cabal + 4 vet = 8 cards that were great to meh as the game advanced.
4 vet + 2 flare = 6 cards " " "

I made several attempts to trim down on Veteran.
The truth is I was "wasting" more than I would like a GSZ into Vet so that I could ramp a bit.

Balance is key and I'm not saying 6 is the sweet spot as I'm definitely lacking back-testing the whole thing.

It's a bit like DnT trimming down on Vials..!

Ralf

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Originally Posted by Ralf

I think we are already scaling down with "do nothing" cards.

4 cabal + 4 vet = 8 cards that were great to meh as the game advanced.
4 vet + 2 flare = 6 cards " " "

I made several attempts to trim down on Veteran.
The truth is I was "wasting" more than I would like a GSZ into Vet so that I could ramp a bit.

Balance is key and I'm not saying 6 is the sweet spot as I'm definitely lacking back-testing the whole thing.

It's a bit like DnT trimming down on Vials..!

Ralf

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Did you consider playing Bayou Groff as another sacrifice outlet? You probably saw it in similar non-black versions before, but thought I'd mention it.

If you're playing an extremely mana-hungry version like this, I can see why you want more Veterans. But about wasting a GSZ on a Veteran, that doesn't seem like a fair evaluation to me, because you're running another card over Veteran. If that card isn't in your hand you'd need to GSZ for Veteran just the same, so the question perhaps is how that other card helps you proceed your gameplan (if you scale down on Veterans). Anyway, it's quite complicated to evaluate these things, Im not sure what's a good evaluation and what isn't. If you need more Veterans, then you do, and I guess that's the important evaluation.

Well, about Vials in DnT, a peripheral topic, it's kind of interesting because I discussed changing Vials into Therapies in the deck building video, they do play a similar role. But while Vial is one of the best cards in Legacy, or has been, Therapy isn't quite as good. Nor is Veteran. Actually, Vial kind of does both what Therapy and Veteran do in Nic Fit, which kind of explains why it's such a good card. It both invalidates all countermagic from your opponent's deck, which is a role that Therapy often takes but never Veteran, and it also adds a lot of mana (virtual mana we might say, only available for creatures but otoh asymetrical), and it also does other things. I wanted to reply to this just because it was overlapping a topic I spent some time on recently without going into details. It's difficult to know what can be implied, what needs to be explicated, and what can be left untouched in a discussion (and I left this part untouched so was eager to cover the topic).

I'd like to discuss the part about 6 low-impact cards but I think I'll rest a bit on that part.

Ok, I don't think I added much here but wanted to comment on it. Curious to hear about your experience. It's fun to see some innovation. Oh and I got Cunning Wishes on MTGO recently, keep thinking about your BUG control deck every now and then and what a wish-board would look like today.

And here's another topic, or two actually, I've been pondering in the back of my mind for a little while. I've been arguing that there's less payoff in terms of threats for Nic Fit, that threats no longer scale with mana like they used to. That may or may not be so, not entirely sure (Atraxa is a great counter-example here I suppose), and very interesting to see Ralf's innovative creature list btw.

However, I was wondering if perhaps this argument should be made for sweepers as well. I think we've discussed quite extensively that Deed isn't as good as it used to be, pretty much since planeswalkers were popular but today also because of delve-threats (well it's old but now Murktide is in so many top decks) and recurring threats like Uro. Removal needs to exile and it needs to ignore CMC, and I'm not sure what options there are.

Thinking about it, I've been curious to try out two cards that kind of help with this, perhaps, and there's still a lot of testing to be done there. Damn was discussed here or in the Discord, it's both 2 mana spot removal when you need to play around Daze and it's a sweeper when you need that. Then there's a card I've been enjoying in different formats on Arena and that's Rite of Oblivion. It's an exiling removal designed like Cabal Therapy, a bit suprising that there's been so little discussion about it in the Nic Fit community but there's not much happening I suppose. Well I'm not sure if it's playable or not yet, it just looks very good to me. There is Sunfall which offers exiling, but I assume it's too expensive. But that's at least an indication of what might be needed.

But perhaps the more important topic is that decks run more and more card advantage, that's how they design cards today, and library manipulation. There are so many ways to manipulate your draws that the relative cost of running 8 low-impact topdecks has increased by a lot. I mean, you can for example run Lorien Revealed to lower your land count which improves topdecks and gives late game card advantage, then you can run Mystic Sanctuary to turn a fetch into another draw three (targeting LR). This kind of card advantage is offered purely through the manabase now in 2024, and I think when we look at the [edit: non-manabase] cards played we find a similar pattern, it's what I interpret as Wizards' effort to make games more interactive, avoiding the problems from bad topdecks.

So my suggestion relative to this point is fairly obvious. In addition to reducing dead late-game topdecks, mitigating them, like I discussed before, it may also be important to try to catch up with this type of card advantage. So, Up the Beanstalk perhaps, Recurring Nightmare as I've discussed, maybe also Lorien Revealed with Mystic Sanctuary is an alternative, Uro and Coatl perhaps, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker perhaps (it both replaces dead draws with looting and provides a 2-for-1 with a card advantage engine in the copy effect). Oh and I guess Atraxa is the ultimate way to do this, perhaps. We may need to do our best to play cards that help us catch up for the virtual card disadvantage in the late game when our key cards are not so useful topdecks. Edit: Tireless Tracker with some way to generate extra landdrops (Knight of the Reliquary, Titania), it was very popular in the first couple of years after released and now it's not so popular.