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Often Titan served the "win more" slot. It most often is a dead card in hand and I'd actually rather Zenith for Tracker late game because of the card advantage. Generally whenever I could be getting Titan into play, I could just be winning with Scapeshift.
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Can't remember if I replied to this, so I'll just do so again. I've gone down to 1 Kruphix now, but it's still useful to hit even though I don't GSZ for it much. It stacks very well with Top and it's a form of CA that stacks well alongside Bob and Tracker. I like having lots of pieces that can combine together rather than just going up on more of the more efficient card like a third Tracker because they're more efficient in combination.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jain_Mor
At the last tournament I played (which I posted about and did horrible at) I did throw some TS in the board, when I was bringing them in I was taking out CA such as in the S&T matchup where it's more important to disrupt than to grind my way up on cards. I'm hoping to come up with a slightly better plan though using the SE Fit approach to construct an optimal 60 for each match, and then deciding on my MB/SB from there.
Yea, it is often useful to construct decks as 75 cards.
Alright people, it's SE sideboard time!
To do this, we're taking the strictly by the numbers SE list (regardless of our personal opinion about it. We mostly just need a common base to work from. After this we just take what we've learned and apply it to our personal lists), for reference:
Creatures (17)
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Veteran Explorer
3 Deathrite Shaman
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Eternal Witness
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
3 Siege Rhino
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
Artifacts (4):
4 Sensei's Divining Top
Sorceries & instants (14):
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Path to Exile
3 Abrupt Decay
Enchantments (3):
3 Pernicious Deed
Planeswalkers (1):
1 Sorin, Grim Nemesis
Lands (21):
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath
2 Marsh Flats
1 Bayou
1 Savannah
1 Scrubland
2 Forest
2 Swamp
2 Plains
2 Phyrexian Tower
The list isn't important just yet, but I do want to put it out there so we can get a feel for what we're working with.
The first step would be to summarize what MUs trouble us and work out for each MU why it is such a problem. For this, we are not looking at our LGS but rather the current DTB section + known troublemakers.
First up is Miracles - they're a problem for a couple of reasons:
- They can answer any of our creatures for just W
- They can answer any number of our creatures at the same time for W
- They are more consistent
- Some of their threats are incredibly hard to answer for us
- They run basic lands
ANT/TES:
- They kill us before we can kill them
- They run a lot of redundancy, making our interaction less effective
- They are more consistent
- They run basic lands
The rest of the current DTB section:
Infect:
- They kill us before we can kill them
- Their threats are hard to block
- They are more consistent
Eldrazi Stompy:
- Their lock pieces slow us down significantly
- Their threats are bigger than ours
Grixis Delver (in my experience a very good MU):
- They have a strong mana denial plan
- Their top end threat can outclass Siege Rhino
D&T:
- They play basic lands
- They have a strong mana denial plan
- They can answer most of our threats for W
- They can protect their own threats (blanking our own spotremoval)
Known offenders:
- anyShow & Tell
- Dredge
- Tin Fins
- Turbo Eldrazi
- Lands
Feel free to add to the above. I'm looking for both MUs we feel we must improve via sideboarding and expansions on why those MUs are so troubling for us.
A lot of this will just be stating the obvious, but sometimes the obvious needs to be stated to ensure everybody still finds it obvious. Testing the common knowledge. Experience tells that this is something that needs to be done from time to time (and that's OK!).
Our next project is officially underway!
My current sideboard which is always work in progress:
1x Night Of Souls' Betrayal
2x Surgical Extraction
3x Thoughtseize
1x Melira, Sylvok Outcast
1x Tsunami
2x Containment Priest
1x Glissa
1x Golgari Charm
3x Slaughter Games
(Gaddock 1x Mb)
First up is Miracles - they're a problem for a couple of reasons:
- 3x Slaughter Games
- 1x Beer (muscle relaxant)
ANT/TES:
- 3x Slaughter Games
- 3x Thoughtseize
- 2x Surgical
Infect:
I run one melira in the sideboard. The gsz for 2 is kinda suspicious but the look in an infect players eyes when melira drops is just beautiful.
Other not so infect specific sb cards are: 2x Thoughtseize, Golgari Charm and (the big one) night of souls' betrayal.
Eldrazi Stompy:
I tried Glissa on my last tournament. Since i had her main and didn't face any decks she was useful against (which seems almost every deck) I moved her to sb. I don't have much experience against these decks but it feels like a skillmatchup which is most times decided in the first 2-3 turns.
Grixis Delver (in my experience a very good MU):
I love to see a turn one delver with any combination of lands. I can only imagine they must feel the same way against nicfit we feel against 12-post. There is little need to sideboard much.
- Nosb, goglari charm
Maybe:
- 1-2 Thoughtseize, 1-2 Surgical
But mainly it's about resolving rhinos.
D&T:
- Nosb, Golgari Charm
- Maybe one Surgical Extraction if I feel lucky
- Maybe 1-2 Thoughtseize
I feel like this matchup is strongly nicfit favored. We got all the tools and our gameplan of handdisruption into midrange ramp is oftentimes just too much to handle for them. You are just looking to grind them out.
Known offenders:
- anyShow & Tell
I just played this matchup a very few times. In my experience they concede when containment priest hits. Dunno why though. It's probably about disruption, locking and removing their pieces combined with luck.
- 2x containment priest
- 2x surgical
- 3x thoughseize
- 3x slaughter games
- Dredge
Little experience (again) but the times i faced dredge i mostly was underwhelmed (knowing all the other combo decks). Maybe it's because i used to run leyline of the void.
- 2x Containment priest
- 2x Surgical
- Maybe slaughter games (dunno really)
We should differ between mana and manaless.
- Tin Fins
Crazy fun matchup though i tend to lose. I still got much room to learn here but it almost feels like 50/50.
2x Surgical Extraction
3x Thoughtseize
2x Containment Priest
1x Golgari Charm
3x Slaughter Games
- Turbo Eldrazi
If I can hold back the tears I feel like I've actually did something against them.
- Lands
Yeah, no fucking clue. What you guys do against them?
I'd board:
- 2x Surgical
- 3x Slaugher Games
Well, I hope this was any help. Would love to see further discuassion since in my year and a half of playing nicfit i mostly worked on the mb.
@Dadadot: I really appreciate the work you've put into that, but you're skipping a few steps there. We're not just jumping into sideboards, we're using tried and proven development methods to work our way towards a sideboard.
We can break our proces down to a few steps:
- Identify the problem(s) (preferably stepping away from deck X and Y and evolving to "T1/T2 kills" for instance)
- Set up a requirements model ("to solve that problem, we need to interact with our opponent T1/T2")
- Develop a solution that solves the problems we identified and upholds the requirements we set for it
Currently we're at the first step - figuring out what the problem really is. For instance: Miracles in itself isn't the problem, the fact that they have certain capabilities that hinder our gameplan is. I want to take a similar approach as we did when we were building the SE Fit list. Rather than think of cards as creatures and instants etc., think of them as interaction pieces or finishers, regardless of the card type. It's all about the function a card fulfills. The translation to our SE SB is that we're stepping away from defining certain MUs as problems but rather define certain behavior those MUs exhibit as the problems we need to solve.
I have this SB currently:
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Thoughtseize (2 main)
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Reclamation Sage
2 Carpet of Flowers
1 Sorin, Grim Nemesis (0 main)
1 Garruk Relentless
2 Abrupt Decay (2 main)
2 Pithing Needle
1 Zealous Persecution
Not much Eldrazi around me, so no Glissa, and Infect isn't that common - mainly DnT and Miracles + unfair decks.
IMO our main issues are:
- More effective threats than ours (Jace, Angler, Combo, Infect creatures, Marit Lage) - particularly ones resistant to removal
- Our game plan getting disrupted (Thalia, Lock pieces, Wasteland
Ok, ic. Well, i will just leave my above comment there and figure out questions or contributions.
Try the above format. Boiling it down to just this still doesn't allow us to properly construct a SB. Some of those cases are don't-cares (Angler, Thalia, Wasteland), others are so widespread that we can't form abstract statements to envelop them all (and at this point in time I refuse to put up "Must include X answers to Jace" as a requirement. This might change over time if that is where this project takes us, but now is not yet that time).Quote:
Originally Posted by Navsi
I foresee that this is going to be one tough cookie.
@everyone: Feel free to pitch in, but try to stick to the provided format. That'll hopefully force you out of your comfort zone a little and helps me compile the data afterwards.
Things I do not want to see (yet):
- Complete sideboards
- Sideboard suggestions
- Sideboarding tables
- Specific problem cards from other decks (This may sound strange but trust me on this one. We'll come to specifics later)
Things I do want to see:
- What MUs do you have trouble with
- What does that deck do to cause problems for you
I don't think we need to split things up as much as you are Echelon. Across all decks, our two weaknesses are resource denial and wincons we have difficulty interacting with. We can split these into:
Resource Denial
- Nonbasic hate (i.e. Wasteland)
- Counterspells (Force, Daze) - Counters and Wastes trade 1 for 1, which means we don't necessarily need many 'answers' for them because they don't actually generate advantage directly themselves. Overloading counterspells is a possibility - we can't really overload a Thalia.
- 'Hatebears (Thalia, etc)
- Noncreature lock pieces (Counterbalance, Chalice)
Threats
- Large 'fair' creatures (Gurmag Angler, Reality Smasher)
- 'Unfair' creatures (Griselbrand, Emrakul, Marit Lage)
- Noncreature permanent wincons (Planeswalkers, Keranos, Grindstone)
- Combos out of hand (Storm)
- Graveyard effects (Reanimator, Dredge)
- Infect (doesn't fit anywhere else)
For each of these categories we are going to want some number of effects which can prevent it from happening. We have some maindeck options:
Wasteland: 6+ basic lands, 8+ fetchlands, Veteran Explorer, STE.
Hatebears: Spot removal maindeck already, sometimes discard
Counterspells: Cabal therapy goes here. Also Dragonlord Dromoka and making enough mana to bypass Daze/Pierce.
Lock pieces: Decay, Vindicates, sometimes discard.
Fair creatures: Spot removal, our own big creatures.
Unfair creatures: Path (unless Emrakul), discard
Noncreature permanents: Vindicate, sometimes decay, discard
Storm: Discard, any hatebears
Graveyard: Deathrite/Scooze, sometimes discard
Infect: spot removal, discard, our own creatures
Looking at the list you put up Echelon, you have the following number of cards which interact with each 'problem':
Wasteland: loads. I don't think we need to SB for this unless we want hate for Port.
Hatebears: ~9 (Path, Decay, Deed)
Counterspells: 4 (Therapy)
Lock pieces: 7 (Decay, Deed, QPM)
Fair creatures: ~8 (Path, Rhino, Sigarda/Meren, Sorin) - I don't think Deed counts here.
Unfair creatures: ~7 (Therapy, Path)
Noncreatures: ~6 (Therapy, Sorin/Decay/Deed) - lots of variety here but we have an answer to most things somewhere, unless it's Keranos
Storm: 4 (Therapy)
Graveyard: 3 (Deathrite)
Infect: 15+ (all our removal and all our creatures) NB: If we read 'infect' as 'Inkmoth Nexus' we have 7 (Path, Deed, Sigarda).
So the strategies we have the least maindeck interaction with are, in order:
1. Graveyard effects (only DRS/Ooze main)
2. Storm (just our discard)
3. Noncreature wincons (Pretty reliant on Therapy here too, but we have a few other ways of interacting usually)
4. Unfair creature wincons (Therapy again, but we have Path to shore up. Emrakul basically counts as a Storm wincon for interaction)
5. Inkmoth Nexus
6. Noncreature lock pieces (quite dependent on Decay numbers)
7. Fair large creatures (i.e. CMC>3) - our own creatures help here
8. Hatebears - vulnerable to all our removal, so we can at least interact on some level
IMO we can potentially get the 'interaction count' to ~10 for each of these categories post-sideboarding. I don't think we can get much further than that without sacrificing points in other areas. In particular, increasing our discard count and extraction effects will bump up the numbers of a large number of these issues at the same time.
I have the feeling I'm not getting my point across. If we continue this way the project'll end shortly (and, to be clear, that'd be my fault). What part of what I'm trying to start is unclear or do you disagree on?
The plan is to:
- Figure out what sorts of deck behavior we have trouble dealing with (and mana denial is one thing we don't care about on general principle)
- Break those problems down into fitting categories (make them more abstract so we're less inclined to think in specifics)
- Formulate theoretical sollutions to those problems (our creatures get swept away -> kill via non-creature cards etc.)
- Come up with a set of requirements and a distribution (using the provided SE Fit list as base)
- Build the SB
On a sidenote: I think Infect should be considered out of hand combo. They get us with a protected alpha-strike. Some of their creatures (Nexus and the blue guy) either have evasion or are just unblockable. For the stuff we can block with ground forces (4 out of 12 threats), a Siege Rhino is pretty laughable in the face of Invigorate + Berserk (and that isn't even a nut kill).
Oh, and an opposing FoW is a 2-for-1 in our favor, not a 1-for-1.
That's what I started on. There are four ways we lose games, which are the same for every deck in Magic pretty much:Quote:
Originally Posted by Echelon
1. We lose to ourselves (mulligan, manascrew, etc)
2. Our gameplan is disrupted in some way
3. Our opponent's gameplan is faster than ours
4. Our opponent's gameplan goes bigger than ours
We can disregard 1. because we've already agreed we're building to counteract variance as best we can. Nothing more to be done here.
3 and 4 are actually very similar. The deck does not often lose to vanilla 'faster than you' decks like generic Delver, Stoneblade and Burn. That means the 'faster' decks are mainly combo decks, which can be considered very similar to 'going bigger' since they often don't care about our threats in a similar manner to a deck which goes bigger than us. It can be simplified to 'Our opponent executes their gameplan in a manner we can't interact with favorably, and wins because of it'.
This what I was just doing. IMO working in heavily abstracted terms is less relevant - this is because in Magic, every problem has a specific set of possible solutions to it. As such when separating out our problems, we should consider them with regards to what cards we can use to solve them. As far as our deck goes, Grindstone (as a card) is functionally similar to, say, Jitte - they're both cards which are answered by Decay, Pithing Needle, and basically nothing else bar discard. As such we should treat them similarly when deciding what we should be playing.Quote:
- Break those problems down into fitting categories (make them more abstract so we're less inclined to think in specifics)
I think you have these the wrong way round. We need to work out what distribution of solutions we want before we work out what those solutions are. We already know we are going to want answers to every problem on our list. We need to work out how many answer to each problem we want, before we work out what they are, because there is overlap between things. Surgical Extraction hits storm, miracles, and graveyard decks. Deciding that the hate we want for Storm is Canonist, and for Miracles we want Slaughter Games or whatever, isn't appropriate until we know how many slots we are working with and whether we can afford to diversify our answers like that or have to play overlapping catchalls with relevance in more matchups.Quote:
- Formulate theoretical sollutions to those problems (our creatures get swept away -> kill via non-creature cards etc.)
- Come up with a set of requirements and a distribution (using the provided SE Fit list as base)
One step at a time, buddy :wink:. That's how these development cycles work. Give the rest a chance to join in on it. If we all work at different stages of the proces at the same time it turns into an unmanagable mess. You have some great insights but they just have to wait a little bit. Lets first lay down a foundation the general populace understands and agrees upon and work from there. This proces is the tortoise, not the hare.Quote:
Originally Posted by Navsi
You may very well be right about that last part. We'll figure it out as we get there. It isn't important yet.
Top8ed again yesterday with BUG pod
1 Eternal Witness
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Murderous Redcap
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Shriekmaw
1 Sower of Temptation
1 Thragtusk
2 Ophiomancer
3 Deathrite Shaman
4 Baleful Strix
4 Veteran Explorer
3 Abrupt Decay
4 Brainstorm
1 Keranos, God of Storms
1 Sylvan Library
2 Pernicious Deed
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Birthing Pod
1 Bayou
1 Swamp
1 Volcanic Island
2 Forest
2 Island
2 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
SIDEBOARD:
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Pithing Needle
2 Pyroblast
3 Flusterstorm
3 Duress
1 Sulfur Elemental
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Giant Solifuge
1 Zur Weirdings
Ophiomancer doing work against eldrazi :laugh:
@Noctalor, cool! What did you top 8? and can we expect a report? I've always wanted to play Ophiomancer but never found a good home for him, but Pod looks like a perfect fit, nice one. Also it be real helpful if you cost-sorted your deck list :P
Cost and type sorted, lol.
I'll try to weigh in on this sideboarding thing.
There are three primary nests of problem decks.
Group A:
Metalworker MUD
12post
Some Eldrazi draws
Group B:
Miracles
Landstill
Group C:
Belcher
Reanimator
ANT/TES
Some Sneak/Show / OmniShow / High Tide draws
Infect
Group A+C:
Lands
Let's get into some quick why's:
Group A is an issue because they go bigger than we do, faster than we go barring our nut draw (Tower shenanigans). Greaves into Metalworker is a tension spot, as is Show and Tell into Primeval Titan, as is Exploration/Manabond, as is just playing a pile of Cloudposts: we don't have any land interaction outside of a sometimes 1-of Vindicate, so they're free to deploy their multi-mana lands without punishment.
Group B is an issue because they have very high-quality answers backed with a ton of card advantage and selection, which makes it very hard to pressure them. I believe that this category has actually gotten much worse since we started systems engineering, because SE revealed Green Sun as the best card in the deck with regards to hitting the multiple (otherwise unachievable) numbers required of interaction, CA, etc. With Green Sun being the best card, the deck shifted to more creature oriented than it traditionally has been in the past, which is great news for Miracles, in particular. Landstill isn't something that's seen very often, but can be very problematic when it shows up. A possible tension point of both decks is the appearance of UU: counterspell, alongside Snapcaster Mage. Another tension point is Jace, the Mind Sculptor backed with sweepers, counters, and removal. He is very, very hard to deal with in a deck that's set up to abuse him -- Shardless is a good example of a deck where Jace isn't actually a problem, on the other side of the coin.
Group C is an issue because they kill us before we can do much to them, again, barring some draws on our end. Every one of these decks can kill on turn 1/2 with good draws, with turn 2 being likely and turn 3 being all but guaranteed in a fishbowl. Our removal is irrelevant here, which admittedly is one of the strengths of the combo archetype, but is something to keep in mind. To be beaten, these decks need to be sideboarded heavily for, just because they're attacking on a completely different than we are.
Lands is a special case, I feel, in that it's both A and C. It goes bigger, faster, thanks to Exploration and Manabond. It's one of the most consistent decks in the format thanks to its 8 Life From the Loams (and 4 one-mana Demonic Tutors once Loam is established), and high number of cycling cards to attain velocity. But it's also C: it can make a Merit Lage on turn 1 and kill you on the swing. Luckily, that at least plays into our Path to Exiles -- but then they'll just make another one via Loam unless we have an active DRS or Ooze.
What this means is that we need the following categories of things:
Land interaction, somefuckinghow. From the Ashes is great, but I'm uneasy about splashing more red cards in white or blue lists. Armageddon is great, but hurts us every bit as badly as it hurts them, and even if we have Baneslayer or some such in play vs Lands, they can still topdeck a clean answer in the format of Maze of Ith. Furthermore, Lands at least has protection from Geddon by way of Mox Diamond (relevant for From the Ashes as well).
Possible solution: Fulminator Mage, especially with Meren and Sun Titan.
Noncreature threats, and/or more resilient creatures. Thragtusk might need to make a return, although Thrag was never really "great" vs Miracles so much as it annoyed them. Enchantments and artifacts are worse than planeswalkers due to Miracles favoring Wear//Tear out of the board vs us anyway, and also due to the growing prevalence of the stupid Nahiri builds. The best planeswalkers here are the bigwalkers -- Sorin and Elspeth Sun's Champ, Karn and Ugin. Nicol Motherfucking Bolas. Etc. Sorin and Elspeth can be counterbalanced if they leave them in, but a lot of Miracles players I've been facing lately have been sideboarding them out. Unfortunately, our mileage may vary. It's interesting to note that Miracles has been struggling with Eldrazi. It might behoove us to investigate the "why" of that, because on paper I'd think Miracles should be fine with that matchup.
Hooks and Needles: big, game-ending anti-combo lock pieces (Trinisphere, Nether Void, Arcane Laboratory, Canonist, Slaughter Games etc), backed up with quick, disruptive jabs -- discard, Thalia, Sphere/Thorn, etc. The best way to beat combo as Nic Fit is to follow this strategy. We want to disrupt them enough to slow them down to a reasonable turn number, and then land something devastating that they can't beat. High Tide gets very pissy about Slaughter Games, as does ANT...and Sneak/Show, and basically every other combo deck. Storm literally can't beat Nether Void, or not before we've beaten them, at any rate. Trinisphere is also great vs Storm and really grinds Omnitell's gears. And so on.
Graveyard hate is needed to some modest quantity. We're not looking for vintage dredge hate here, but we need ways to interact with Dark Depths once its made the 20/20 that we can hopefully solve. A modicum of graveyard hate improves a number of other matchups, and gives us something else to maybe hopefully do vs Reanimator, although that's likely still awful even with hate -- we'd need like Leyline of the Void to try to fix that.
Which conveniently segues me into my next point:
We should establish which decks are nonviable to actively try to beat.
For example, I'll bring in the two Surgicals from my board vs Reanimator, sure - I'd be crazy not to. But they're not THERE for Reanimator. They're there for Lands. I am of the opinion that Reanimator would take at least 5 sideboard slots, dedicated, mind, to bring that matchup up to 50/50. Something like 6-8 is likely required to give us a positive win% postboard. This is incredibly not worth it, in my opinion. Belcher is another example of this. You'd need to sideboard cards like Leyline of Sanctity and Mindbreak Trap to deal with Belcher effectively, and it's just flat not worth it. We need to accept that these landmines are just going to exist for us and hope that we don't run into them, and dedicate our sideboard to the things that we either CAN beat, or to overlap cards. For example, I kind of innovated Rakdos Charm in vintage because it is a split Dredge/Shops card, which ALSO happens to now splash on to Storm (Dark Petition didn't exist at Champs last year). That makes it a very, very good sideboard card, because it gives you a lot of extra room in your board while still helping you to check off the boxes you need. Slaughter Games is probably the closest analog in Nic Fit -- it comes in vs the slow control decks and the combo decks, serving double purpose as a right hook for combo and an effective threat that deals with otherwise hard to answer problems from control.
Now, as far as how many cards we want for each matchup / category type, that's not something I'm really going to be able to contribute. I think it has to come down to expected metagames -- how many times during the GP do we expect to play vs Miracles, for example, how many times vs Lands, how many times vs Storm, etc. Over a 14 round event I'd say probably something like 3, 2, 1 respectively, with the rest of the matches being Delver of various types, Shardless, and probably 3-4 more 1-of matches to things like Painter, Infect, other Nic Fit players, etc.
Something that's worth considering about that, as well, is what our /goals/ for the GP are. Are we planning on Day 2ing? Are we planning on top 16ing? Are we trying to take the whole thing down? I mean obviously playing to win, etc -- but keep in mind that aiming to take down the entire event has a slightly different sideboarding setup than if we're just aiming to make Day 2 and prey on Delver. For example, we probably need to board more heavily, or more severely, perhaps, for Miracles, if we're trying to place highly and not just make Day 2. This is because I would expect to face an increasing number of Miracles decks on Day 2 itself, as compared to Day 1. That means that we would end up having a more difficult road to Day 2, but would be better prepared once we're there. Just a couple of extra considerations.
Hope that helps.
Another thing to consider is that we need to be aware of the number of cards we have which must be sided out in certain matchups. In particular, the lists playing Thoughtseize, Unmaking and/or Truths maindeck need something they can side them into against decks where they are actively bad, like Delver and Burn, which we may not otherwise have any sideboard slots for, since those cards are actively bad there. This is less relevant against our traditionally bad matchups, since a) we are already planning to side things in there and b) if we leave some durdly creatures in, they can at least still present a clock - for a card to be completely irrelevant in a matchup it has to be a noncreature which reduces the number of times it comes up against the combo decks.
I think this is the big problem with playing Seize maindeck, since it eats up SB slots anyway in replacements for it against Delver.
To be fair, I'm still on the fence as to whether siding Thoughtseize in vs Delver is correct or not. On the surface it seems poor, but there are advantages -- most of Delver's cards will do more than 2 points of damage to you anyway, for one. Thoughtseizing away a Deathrite or a Lightning Bolt is still net saving life, and you get information. Sometimes you get to hit their Delver or their Gurmag, and answer a big problem -- other times, you hit a Force or a Stifle and you can execute your game plan, which as we all know, when we get to execute vs Delver, we basically just win. Stifle and Force are the only ways they can meaningfully interact with us, so taking those away is great.Quote:
Originally Posted by Navsi
However, there's also been plenty of times where Thoughtseize has been just kind of really junky against Delver. Obviously it's an atrocious topdeck after turn 3-4, and generally if they have any creature established in play, you don't want to play the card. God forbid they have a Deathrite and make you lose 4 life for your efforts.
Where I've kind of settled on Thoughtseize is that it's PROBABLY worth bringing it in on the play vs Delver, and immediately boarded out on the draw. Again, I'm far from certain about this, but that's what my instincts are telling me.
I don't like TS into Delver because it costs us mana and life, which are our big constraints there - we generally don't have so much trouble stabilizing if we can get to actually cast our cards, and the trade Seize gives isn't relevant to board position unless we cast it while the delver player has no threats on board, in which case most of our other cards are just as good. For clearing away their counters and so on, we are already playing 4 Therapy - I don't think playing 5+ interaction effects which don't actually help us deal with a threatening board position is safe.