For those on the BUG varient, has anyone tried running a singleton Sidisi, Undead Vizier, and if so how have you found it?
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For those on the BUG varient, has anyone tried running a singleton Sidisi, Undead Vizier, and if so how have you found it?
I'm thinking of going to Columbus and playing BUG Pod again. It's been a little while since I've played the deck. Congrats on the finish Noctalor. I have some observations/questions.
Ophiomancer - this card looks sweet. I have played it in cube online and it was always great. I'll definitely be trying this out.
Red splash - How many times have you gotten color screwed by having this red splash? I tried out a white splash for Orzhov Pontiff a while ago (before they printed Minister of Pain) and the card was good but I also got stuck with it in my hand too much for my liking.
It is pretty cool that you can fetch Keranos out with Birthing Pod. Are the pyroblasts in the sideboard a good enough substitute for Force of Will against combo? I see you have duress as well.
It's also worth noting that they upgraded Envelop (Invasive Surgery) and we can turn on delirium quite easily with in this deck thanks to Baleful Strix.
What have you been playing against in these tournaments? What are your thoughts on the various matchups?
Thanks.
@Navsi, I tend to have additional sweeper effects like Toxic Deluge and Engineered explosives for elves (which is s really hard matchup in my experience) and other creatures decks in the sideboard that switch one for one with the two main deck Thoughtsiezes and that's generally all the sideboarding you do.
If I didn't run main deck Thoughtseize I probably wouldn't sideboard at all. What do you sideboard out/in against delver?
I play a 2/2 Main/Side split with my Abrupt Decays, so that's two slots which replace Thoughtseize against delver variants and most other aggressive decks. At the moment I'm running 1 Zealous Persecution which would probably come in against most Delver builds as well, particularly ones running YP.
If I'm having to cut all 4 life costing spells (2 Thoughtseize, 1 Unmaking, 1 Truths) I'd probably put in 2 Decay, 1 ZP, 1 Reclamation sage - just for a Zenithable removal effect for Sulfuric Vortex if they're in red, or any equipment if they're in white. It's also just a blocker which is fine a lot of the time, and kills a lot of their unexpected spicy sideboard tech like Sylvan Library or whatever.
Regarding those concerned with Post, MUD, and Land's match-ups. When I was playing junkfit I ran a single tagia in the main, and in the board had 3 blood moon's, and 3 slaughter games. It helps all those matches, unfortunately moon does nothing to help with miracles, though slaughter games certainly does. Someone posted a board similar to this sometime ago and I would definitely do it if I were to start playing junkfit again
The first thing I notice is that Miracles, ANT, D&T, S&T are all using our Vet's against us.Quote:
Originally Posted by Echelon
I wouldn't consider DnT to be a problem matchup, although that might just be for me. I've only ever lost to the deck a handful of times, and I've had to play vs it a -lot-. Admittedly, my sweeper-heavy approach was likely much better vs that deck as compared to spot removal.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brael
Miracles is still the only deck among these where I consider Veteran to be a drawback. Vs ANT and S&T, you shouldn't be cracking a Vet "just cause." You need to have something impactful to do with that mana, or else be stripping their hand. While they do derive value, the trick is that you need to use the immediate effect of the mana to do something backbreaking. You get to use the lands first (for sorcery speed spells), take advantage of it.
I wasn't trying to say that it's necessarily a problem matchup, but rather that a big pattern in the mentioned decks is that several of them are able to get value off of our Vet's which would suggest a plan for SB games.Quote:
Originally Posted by Arianrhod
I realize that we get the lands first but our curve tends to be higher so if they can use the lands it's a bigger tempo boost for the opponent even if we might get a more powerful card out of it.
How's this deck positioned these days? I'm looking for a deck to take to Columbus and debating a move off of Esper Stoneblade in large part because I feel like access to Abrupt Decay is going to be something I'll want. It has been a couple years since I've played Nic Fit though. How's it stacking up? How is it against Eldrazi?
I tend to play red cards opnly in non wasteland MUs, the worst you can get is the mono waste from infect or some wasteland UWR deck, you can fetch safely a red source instead of the second black one in those mu, you can even cast murderous this way.Quote:
Originally Posted by GtF
The worst of the slash is not being able to board pyros against shardless, the card is ofc good against both vision and jace, but we cant take the risk to get smashed by wasteland, red splash still nuts here since landing keranos is a free win.
Combo is pretty reasonable with 3 counters 3 duress 2/3 pyros 2 surgical 1 needle, i dont really like force here, we have few blue card and most of them are too valuable to be "wasted", people will play around force anyway most of the times giving us a turn to get our counter online, and our counter is fluster for this reason, people will go off protected expecting a force, so we will likely lose anyway having a single counter up, fluster should autowin couunter war early on and we can grind hard in the mid to late game in the combo MU so we should we good.
If you play invasive over fluster you will emprove the bad mu against scapeshift, miracle will improve but infect needs way more help than any fair MU, even not considering the problem with holding a single counter in the omnitell MU.
Surgery should probably be a go to if you dont go for the red splash.
In tournament my scores are 5/2, 6/3, 5/0/2, 4/1, nothing impressive but the deck is not so bad, you can easily stand a chance to top8 in a competitive enviroment.
Worst MUs are lands, eavy ramp strategy like post and combo decks, we can easily board against combo getting a pretty even MU, lands is a nightmare unless we get a lucky surgical asap, but i dont really feel like dedicating more than the solifuge to this mu, is important to note that the solifuge is here both to kill planeswalker and to ramp into keranos against active punishing fires.
We tend to win creature based MU, death and taxes is generally good unless the turn 1 mother into fast revoker on deed, eldrazi is pretty good unless we get rekt in the very early game.
So in the end, decent in fair MU with some really good ones like eldrazi and some disaster ones like lands, bad to decent against combo, decent against controls, way better than any other nic fit against miracle probably
Thinking about the Miracles matchup and the way we trade cards with them, I feel like the biggest problem we have is that we can't afford to trade 1 for 1 against them. They probably beat us in the card advantage department, with access to Counterbalance and Jace and Snapcaster. We also usually don't have enough threats to overwhelm them, since some percentage of our deck is going to be cards which don't generate a board presence, like Veteran Explorer. The thing I realised though is:
None of our actual threats force the deck to 2-for-1 itself.
There's Force, of course, but Force does get hardcast against us quite a lot. Otherwise, because of Terminus and Swords, the Miracles player very rarely has to 'trade down' which means they are highly unlikely to fall behind in card parity unless something goes wrong (Therapy crit, Meren survives for three turns, or whatever).
Is this something we can change? Obviously the big outlier here is Arianrhod's GBC Kozilek Nic Fit build, which has 5+ creatures which both demand an answer and generate Card Advantage immediately - Kozilek, Ulamog, and Thought-Knot, along with potential inclusions of Primeval Titan, Smasher, and Emrakul. Otherwise, there is Thragtusk, which does the job very effectively but also doesn't present a particularly scary clock (and costs 5) and finally Tireless Tracker, which I think might be our best bet here. Tracker threatens a lot of damage, but at the same time replaces himself at the very least, allowing us to potentially equalise or pull ahead in card advantage, even if the opponent has a Swords immediately. The other option I've been looking at is Sword of Fire And Ice, since it upgrades Veterans into actual threats and basically forces the deck to find Council's Judgment ASAP or have to deal with every creature we put on the board for the rest of the game.
Tracker replaces itself if played under the right circumstances.
You can approach this in 2 ways. Either we need to start 2-for-1'ing them a lot more or we need to play threats they can't answer, rendering their cards useless.
Let's assume for arguments sake that running a Taiga + SB Slaughter Games is no longer a valid strategy (nor is splashing any colour specifically for SB cards, for that matter). If it really was, I think we would have stopped looking for alternatives a long time ago (no offense).
I guess cards like Tsunami and Choke come to mind, letting us X-for-1 their manabase as do planeswalkers since neither StP or Terminus hit those.
On another note - this morning I came to the conclusion that mosts lists we do have problems with run basics (based off I believe Navsi's? observation) but also don't run Wasteland. This means one can safely fetch duals, which also means that in those MUs we might be able to board in Hymn to Tourach. Seems fine vs. ANT/TES and anyShow & Tell and at least lets us 2-for-1 Miracles a little bit. As long as you run enough fetches it's quite reasonable to get Bayou T1 and Scrubland T2 so you can cast anything from Hymn to Gaddock Teeg on just 2 lands.
I have been seeing a lot more nic fit decks online lately, it is very nice! And the pilots I have talked to were always very talkative and open to feedback :D
By the way, today I have seen a guy on nic fit, he was against Eldrazi. Apparently he won the game out of nowhere casting a surprise PoP. Like, what?
Has PoP ever been suggested here? But when you think about it, the card helps in certain match ups like Lands, BUG and Eldrazi. All decks that gets obliterated by PoP. And it can't be chaliced out of the game (unlike path or ts).
Just for the sake of it I am trying 1-2 PoP in the side now, let's see how it plays out. Thoughts?
Yes. That crazy person was me. I was deemed crazy at the time.Quote:
Originally Posted by rubblekill
This was before Eldrazi was a thing, mind you.
It seems crazy, but I'm starting to think it is not that crazy. At least not Echelon-level crazy :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Echelon
Echelon-level crazy is running both PoP and Siege Rhino. Attacking is for pussies.Quote:
Originally Posted by rubblekill
On a more serious note - seeing as we also run Eternal Witness and quite possibly Meren of Clan Nel Toth (and Diabolic Intent), a bit of PoP can go a long way.
I might be crazy but Veteran Explorer -> Diabolic Intent to Price of Progress -> (GSZ to) Eternal Witness into Price of Progress seems pretty sexy. Assembling Meren of Clan Nel Toth + Eternal Witness + Phyrexian Tower + Price of Progress (which can be done with a single Diabolic Intent!) is porn.
Echelon-level crazy means only to indulge in that trashy fetish that is Fierce Empath + Karador :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Echelon
PoP makes sense in theory, I'll test and report back my results here.
Karador + Phyrexian Tower + Eternal Witness + PoP is sexy too and can also be assembled with a single Diabolic Intent... EDH-porn..?Quote:
Originally Posted by rubblekill
LoL this is hilarious
http://i.imgur.com/9J7jb2Y.jpg
It's beautiful and glorious!
How did you cast it though?
Also, this has given me some ideas. I'll work it out as a build tomorrow. Spoilers: Speed, PoPs, Diabolic Intents and recursion engines!