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- on Dryad Arbor you will have to choose a camp.Quote:
Originally Posted by Medea_
Camp A: worst card, dies to Deed, like a Mulligan if drawn in your opening hand, not a land slot and still an awful topdeck
Camp B: best card, super flexible, lots of cool tricks
- pretty much everyone agrees that Tracker and Sorin perform great
- Meren is good on paper but performs bad for many people
Arbor makes Meren and equipment a little better/consistent (or vice versa). Also there are games where GSZ @ 0 is solid as an opening. Enables some tempo on the early game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tao
That said, going forward i would only play Meren + Arbor in a SFM build.
Deeding away your own stuff is annoying, but not as scary as it sounds. If you do, you either;
Prevent losing,
Gain board control,
Are left with something juicy and/or
Prepared for it to happen and build up a hand to continue creating board presence.
Overextending into your own deed is somewhat clumsy and unnecessary, but sometimes something you can't avoid.
I folks, here is my current version of Nic Fit.
I think it's quite a totally new version of it since it's based on enchantements.
To begin with, my strategy is based on humility. Card which breaks many decks main strategy.
On my firsts versions, it was a superfriends list, with many combat planeswalkers (Elspeth, Sorin, Freyalize, Gideon) and batterskull.
Then I tried Starfield of Nyx and felt totally in love with it. Since, I increased it up to 2 and then increased academy rector up to 4 meanwhile humility decreased to 1 MD/1 SB.
So, my current version then details and global report:
1 Bayou
1 Mountain
1 Savannah
1 Taiga
2 Plains
2 Swamp
3 Forest
3 Phyrexian Tower
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath
1 Centaur Vinecrasher
1 Chromanticore
1 Courser of Kruphix
1 Eternal Witness
4 Academy Rector
4 Veteran Explorer
3 Liliana of the Veil
4 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Assemble the Legion
1 Dead Weight
1 Humility
1 Martyr's Cause
1 Oblivion Ring
2 Starfield of Nyx
2 Sterling Grove
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Cabal Therapy
SB: 2 Carpet of Flowers
SB: 1 Choke
SB: 4 Leyline of the Void
SB: 3 Leyline of Sanctity
SB: 1 Humility
SB: 1 Blood Moon
SB: 1 Curse of Death's Hold
SB: 1 Spirit of the Labyrinth
SB: 1 Aura Shards
Humility: as said, it's a hard to manage card that manage main of all based on creature strategy. Meanwhile I keep cards fiting this card to choke then defeat my opponent.
Starfield of Nyx: as Meren, it generates a lot of CA on a reanimate strategy. But remains efficient under humility and against deathrite shaman. On a second time, it's a kill by transforming others enchants in creatures (if humility cames first or a second Starfield cames last, big creatures against my opponent 1/1). And the last but not the least, able to activate pernicious deed each and every turns. Who often leads opponent to concede.
Centaur Vinecrasher: A recursive creature that can be a huge threat even with humility on the table.
Courser of Kruphix: as knowned CA, gain life, zenithable, rectorable and now starfieldable.
Chromanticore: I was looking for a second creature enchantement to run along starfield. This one is zenithable and lifelink + vigilance + fly is a final blow against a lot of decks. So it took batterskull place. Until now I'm really satisfied. Without humility it do it's job. With it, it's still a starfieldable creature which can become 5/5. I'm thinking about puting a random island in the deck... So of course you're usually not the happiest to draw it, but you can discard it under Lili and then wait for starfield.
Assemble the legion: back on superfriend version, I often was in a situation where I wasn't able to kill because of maze of ith and punishing fire (a lot of aggro loam in my area), or locked by Jace + terminus. So Assemble the legion gave me an alternate win condition that's huge along with humility. It's a clock that even if reseted kills in a few turns. It leads me to add a basic mountain and a taïga fetchable.
Solid grove: I used to kept them on side to manage enchant hate. But they give shroud to my kills and enchant-creatures. And gives access to my enlarged enchant toolbox, recursively along with starfield. And gives an extra shot with top.
Oblivion ring: manage which can't be with deed (big ccm, planeswalker, needle on deed). Along with activated starfield, can be sacrificed under phyrexian tower when cames into play for a definitive exil effect.
Dead Weight: aura version of disfigure. Manage 2 of our worst ennemies: revoker and deathrire shaman. The aura aspect manage monastery mentor, is tutorisable and recursive under starfield to trickily manage even TNN or mother of runes. Can be used to kill our rector/veteran.
Martyr's cause: I tried buble force which revealed to be too conditionnal to be useful. This one has a instant sacrifice effect and buy time to get on middle/late game against heavy damage menace decks (eldrazi, Dark Depth). Still on the try, but perhaps will be replaced by a diabolic intent...
Liliana of the Veil: I agreed that she's not suitable for most of Nic Fit versions. But here she's in a synergy with starfield to a reanimate strategy. Allow to drop big ccm enchant on early game while diminushing opponent's options to manage an incoming rector/starfield. Plus her asset aspects against control and combo deck.
Phyrexian tower: often the first wasteland target. I never regretted to play 3 of them, even with 2 in an opening hand.
Match up main deck:
I'm strongly armed against every based on creatures strategy decks except Eldrazi which is fair and T1 reanimate deck which is a hard one.
Good too against burn (courser, martyr's cause and chromanticore)
I'm quite good against stompy and sneak and show.
I think I'm now fair against miracle but need further tests with this latest version.
I'm a bit weak against combo if not crazy cabal turn.
After side, I'm really good against combo thanks to the leylines and better against grave based strategy too. Better against miracle thanks to choke and carpet. Bloodmoon and 2nd humility against eldrazi.
I think this is a strong version, even if lately I had a lot of gain on table games that I lost with a bad choice (Greedy choices and new card add effect mostly). I play it only from a few month so as said by Arianrhod on the first page I can only improve.
Here I am. I'm wide open to any constructive comment to improve and polish it.
Thanks!
Arbor can just be silly with Equipment. Was able to beat Miracles last night (for the first time with nic fit! woo! ok I've only done like, 1 league with BUG and 1 league with SFM fit, but still).Quote:
Originally Posted by Bobmans
Left a fetchland on the field. After they Terminus'd, I cracked it for Arbor end of turn, and proceeded to suit it up with SoFaI and go to town.
Sorin crushes any sort of board stall and performs well against Miracles unless they have a way to remove it. Meren, like Tao said, looks great on paper and I've GSZ'd for it a few times, but I haven't ever got to abuse it. Glissa is definitely tech against Eldrazi and any sort of big creature matchup. Rhino may be an average Goyf but sometimes Goyfs are above average. I hate the card Dryad Arbor in any competitive format because sometimes you draw it and it is the worst thing ever; it is probably fine if you need dorks to carry a sword I guess.Quote:
Originally Posted by Medea_
@Ulysse95
Looks very interesting, but I do think your mana base and win cons are a bit on the unstable side. The removal and general Starfield + Deed plan looks awesome, but the R splash makes the deck look real wobbly. Particularly since you want to cast Lilianas with no DRS and 11 black sources.
Is it reasonable to drop the R? I get that Assemble the Legion and Blood Moon are powerful cards, but it might be worth it to move things to a Taiga + Blood Moon in the side and just have a much more stable mana base game one. For wincons, planeswalkers work, as does Sigarda, or if you want an enchantment option there's always Heliod/Nylea both of which are likely to win any Humility-based standoff. It's a real pity that Karametra, Athreos and Pharika are all so underwhelming. Vinecrasher is a wincon, but you already have a list with a lot of recursion in, so I don't know if you need more resilient threats. Might be worth playing more multidimensional creatures instead, or stuff that doesn't have serious trouble with RIP.
The deck also looks like it could do well with a Recurring Nightmare shell in there, although that might be a bit too deep on the graveyard plan. One of the advantages of running the Enchantment build is that DRS can't exile noncreature enchantments, which makes you significantly more resistant to hate than people might expect. Running a Nightmare loop might remove that advantage.
I'm getting back into legacy after 10 months of not playing actively, so I want to find out which version of Abzan Rhino Fit is the most consistent of them all, so I can start testing online and be prepared for tournaments?
TnQ in advance!
Alright. I've taken some time, a couple steps back, and processed all of the information. Here's where I'm at:
The meta as such is thus:
Miracles is widely agreed to be tier S. The pressure exerted by this deck existing warps the format around it.
The tier 1 decks of the format, per the data, are Shardless, Eldrazi, and Grixis Delver. Popular decks that are also putting up results in this meta include DnT, Storm, and RG Lands. We're talking about a GP, so Burn is also worth noting.
This gives us the following list of decks to prepare specifically for:
S:
Miracles
1:
Grixis Delver
Eldrazi
Shardless
1.5:
DnT
Burn
Storm
Lands
I organized them within categories roughly in terms of how many of each I would expect, via metashare. Grixis Delver is more populous than Eldrazi, which is more populous than Shardless. And so.
Eldrazi and Shardless are both very good at combating Miracles. Obviously Miracles has and can adapt, but both of those decks has found a working way to defeat the deck a reasonable amount of the time. Delver is Delver. There is always Delver.
From what I've seen via coverage and research, Eldrazi is combative vs Miracles primarily because of Eye of Ugin. Miracles can stave off Eldrazi through the midgame, but once Eldrazi hits 7 mana and can start activating Eye of Ugin, very bad things start happening to Miracles.
Shardless vs Miracles basically boils down to two things: planeswalker control, and raw card advantage. Ancestral Vision backed with Decay to keep Counterbalance at bay is strong in the matchup, as is Liliana of the Veil and Jace TMS: Miracles has few ways of effectively pressuring planeswalkers g1, although it is effective at protecting its own. Shardless can keep the foot on the gas a little longer than Miracles can, which is important.
There are two takeaways from this: the Colorless builds, to have a functional Miracles matchup, need to leverage Eye of Ugin. There's not really much surprise there, but it does have an effect on how the deck is built. Also, Painful Truths is somewhere we very much want to be vs Miracles.
With this in mind, I've come down personally to either forcing Colorless to work for Columbus, whether it's technically ready or not, or to play Rhinos with a revised mindset and sideboard.
Colorless:
4 Veteran Explorer
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Fauna Shaman
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Fierce Empath
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
4 Thought-Knot Seer
1 Reality Smasher
1 Primeval Titan
1 Kozilek, the Great Distortion
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Ancient Stirrings
1 Toxic Deluge
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Pernicious Deed
2 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
1 Eye of Ugin
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Bayou
1 Llanowar Wastes
2 Cloudpost
4 Glimmerpost
4 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Wastes
1 Karakas
1 Phyrexian Tower
sb::
1 Endbringer
2 Warping Wail
2 Thoughtseize
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Reality Smasher
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Golgari Charm
2 Krosan Grip
2 Obstinate Baloth
This is my current take. I'm down to 6 Posts, to keep the Enters-Tapped lands to an absolute minimum. One of my friends locally is suggesting 2 of each Tron piece instead, but I'm not sure I want to be without the lifegain from the Glimmers, which has been roughly as good for me as Cloudposts have been questionable. Ideally, I want to be in a scenario where I have one of: Eye / 2 Cloudposts in play, then Titan for the other two, which will still allow for Eye shenanigans without needing to overly warp the manabase.
I'm trying out some different creature choices here, like Fauna Shaman to turn lategame accelerants into gas. I'm also running more removal. I couldn't quite fit in as much as I wanted -- I was hoping to have a pair of Maelstrom Pulses as well, but there just wasn't any room.
One maindeck Reality Smasher with two more in the board helps the grindy matchups a lot. It's very possible that as I test, the 2nd Primeval finds its way back into the deck. I definitely don't want more than that, though.
Endbringer in the sideboard is something that I think is actually a pretty great option at the moment, for builds that can take advantage of him. He breaks grindy stalled board states wide open, and he makes Show and Tell and Lands both very unhappy if you get him online. Lands can enjoy their nice indestructible endlessly recurring 20/20 that can never attack or block :)
Rhinos:
4 Veteran Explorer
2 Deathrite Shaman
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Deadly Recluse
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Eternal Witness
3 Siege Rhino
1 The Gitrog Monster
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
2 Baneslayer Angel
1 Dragonlord Dromoka
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
2 Painful Truths
3 Path to Exile
2 Abrupt Decay
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath
3 Bayou
2 Savannah
1 Scrubland
3 Forest
2 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Karakas
sb::
1 Sorin, Grim Nemesis
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
1 Painful Truths
1 Krosan Grip
1 Golgari Charm
2 Tsunami
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Thoughtseize
2 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Celestial Purge
1 Toxic Deluge
This is my current Columbus prototype while I work on Colorless.
The maindeck is similar to what I had before, with a couple of slight changes. The deck honestly felt pretty great, so I didn't want to change much. Spiderbro still holds the ground early while removal and sweep covers the wide angle. Gitrog replaced Meren. Hypnotoad earned his due respect at Charlotte, and I expect him to continue being great here.
The sideboard is a bit different. I'm not forcing cards to be playable against Miracles. I'm refocusing my lines of attack around a couple of axes, and if that's good enough, great. If it's not, then I'm not going to force the issue any further -- best deck in the format or not, it's still just one deck, and unlike a lot of other decks, it actually lets you play a game, so there's always options for out manuevering and outplaying.
Celestial Purge is something that I think might be a card we've overlooked. It hits Liliana, Deathrite, Blood Moon, Nahiri, and Gurmag to name a few, with a lot of other, more fringe applications. Most relevantly, though, it's an instant speed, 2-mana answer to two very irritating planeswalkers.
I want the third Painful Truths maindeck, but I don't know that I can swing it. I could potentially try shaving to 21 lands to squeeze it in, which is an option.
When rebuilding the deck, I questioned if I wanted the Baneslayers long and hard, and I came to the conclusion that I really just do. Columbus is likely going to be a very aggressive metagame, and Baneslayer stomps all over that.
I also want to look into the possibility of a KotR/Tireless Tracker/Gitrog landfall-styled version at some point. I don't think I'll get around to it before Columbus, but I think that there could very well be something there.
Good post. How exactly has Gitrog earned his spot in your deck? What's your experience with it? I'm curious. I'm playing a 3rd draw spell in the sb atm, just to have one more chance against some of the problematic match ups you have mentioned.Quote:
Originally Posted by Arianrhod
But this is just plain wrong.Quote:
Originally Posted by Arianrhod
Eldrazi beats Miracles because Chalice @1 hurts them like a bitch, Cavern of Souls makes their counters useless, Counterbalance doesn't do much agaisnt Eldrazi's curve - and all of that is combined with a blazing fast clock. The thing they hate to see the most are uncounterable Reality Smashers. Hell, they can even counter Terminus if Eldrazi have a good day.
Eye of Ugin is just a very minor factor due to the amount of non-Eldrazi mana it costs. You will only rarely activate it.
Ill be trying this. Excuse brevity on mobile.
4 vet
2 drs
1 ooze
1 witness
1 tracker
4 rhino
1 sigarda
4 gsz
4 therapy
3 path
3 deed
3 decay
3 top
1 sylvan
2 truths
2 sorin
1 elspeth KE
22 lands
/////
3 thoughtseize
1 teeg
1 safekeeper
1 deluge
1 charm
2 needle
1 sigarda
2 canonist
2 ruination/geddon
1 games or hide/seek
I guess the question is how much to warp the deck to beat Miracles how often. Another is, if we were running a trop instead of a taiga, what would you play in blue that splashes easily and helps our bad matchups? Flusterstorm? Edric? Not sure. Is REB the answer?
I like Ruination way more than Geddon, since we dont want to see Geddon that much, and we have few other Eldrazi options.
Trying Tracker for the first time over Truths #3.
Gitrog is just a house against anything except Karakas. When he comes down, your opponent basically has to get rid of him immediately. There's very few ways to do this -- StP ,which they need to use almost as soon as they draw vs us anyway; Liliana of the Veil -2, if we have no other creatures out, or Maelstrom Pulse/Council's Judgment, which are 1ofs and not always ran. Gitrog might generate value immediately, if you have any fetches sitting in play waiting for a Top, or you might need to untap with him. At the point at which you untap with him, however, he's automatically a 2-for-1 in our favor (and usually a 3-for-1 vs Lightning Bolt decks), assuming no further fetchlands or shenanigans -- all of which make him an even greater + in our favor.
Even without trying to push him any further -- more fetches, Wastelands, Sylvan Safekeeper, Titania, Knight of Reliquary, etc -- he's still been very, very solid. At worst, he's probably trading with a 6/7+ Goyf. He loses to Karakas, but so do an awful lot of our best cards anymore. Aside from that, he's just a beast.
@Barook: you'll forgive me -- I'm not an Eldrazi player, nor am I a Miracles guy. I can only speak to what I've seen, which is more grindy matches than what you describe. I can certainly see how what you're saying would prove a problem to them as well, especially Reality Smasher, which basically demands a Terminus. Either way, there are lessons to be learned here.
@Thread: I've been thinking about this a lot the last couple of days, and Matt's list that he just posted made me think about it even more. As a result of the SE Fit discussion, we discovered that GSZ was our best card since it lets us cheat on the numbers of each type of card that we can run, which makes us inherently more flexible. But I've been having a lot of trouble when building recently with just hitting an acceptable number of cards for GSZ. This is especially problematic for the Colorless builds, but even looking at Matt's deck, you can see this playing out a bit. He has 14 targets. 3 of them you're generally unhappy with -- we usually only Zenith for an Explorer once except in certain matchups (Shardless BUG comes immediately to mind as a good example, as does Eldrazi). Deathrite is less embarrassing to Zenith mid-late game, but still not great. Ooze at this point is basically quality locked to how many creatures your opponents deck is running -- there aren't many that will be dying in your deck at this point. And so on.
I'm not sure that there is another way around this problem, or even if we should necessarily be looking -- but I've started to hit issues with the tension between our spells and our creatures. There just isn't enough room in the damn deck anymore.
I don't think Traverse is the answer we're looking for necessarily, but I'm not sure what is.
Edit:
A friend of mine just pointed out that we did make it in to EMA after all -- if only in flavor text.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CjZzziMUoAAJ41v.jpg
Your Rhino version cannot beat Miracles with a good pilot, ever. Baneslayers and Dromoka get competely hardcountered, even worse than Rhinos, and they already get countered pretty bad. Out of 10 games you will either lose 9 or 10.Quote:
Originally Posted by Arianrhod
The Eldrazi thing can work so I am going to comment on that. Theorycrafting I know, but maybe a second opinion is welcome. Just hope you never run into 12-post, that matchup is probably around 2-3%, but every deck has bad matchups, and other Nic Fit versions dont do much better.
You go over the top of what Miracles do, that is a good strategy. I would try to get rid of all things that are "could be nice to have at some point" and streamline more to surviving and following the game plan:
First of all: - 2 Glimmerpost, +2 Cloudpost: Are you insane or something? Why would you play 4 Glimmer, 2 Cloud? Sure, I have never played this deck, but this can’t be right.
Then:
- 1 Fauna Shaman: seems awful. Either the opponent plays tons of removal for this type of card or the card is too slow.
- 1 Reclamation Sage: What are you really afraid of with 3 Decay, 3 Deed, Ugin and an Ulamog?
- 1 Reality Smasher: You don’t tutor for it. It is just midrangy and kind of there for no reason wasting deck space. “Here take 5 to the face and go from 19 to 14 before I play my Ulamog next turn” – what is even the point of that nonsense.
Add:
+2 Ancient Stirrings: Why not play 4? Is there ever a turn or situation in which you don’t want one? Turn 1-3? Stirring is great, it finds posts. Turns 4-6? Stirrings is great, it finds threats or posts, whatever is lacking. Turn 7-x? Stirrings is great, it finds more gas.
+ 1 Eternal Witness: With 4 Stirrings Witness gets much better. GSZ on Witness on Stirrings is like GSZ on Fauna Shaman, except it has Haste and doesn’t care about removal and you don’t need to discard a card and in case of emergency it gets back Wasted Posts or Deeds.
More thoughts: Second Titan? 7th Post? Thragtusk? Wurmcoil? Innocent Blood? Second Tower?
The best card Eldrazi can play post-board vs Miracles is All is Dust. If it resolves (it rarely gets countered because they've run out of counters at that point), it's basically an "I win" button. Probably needs some adaptions because it isn't a one-sided board sweeper in Nic Fit like it is in Eldrazi. If you want to go that route, you should definitely try it out.
Rhino's strength isn't against Miracles, and that's something that I'm coming to just accept. I don't like the idea of throwing that matchup away, but Rhino has felt very, very well positioned against the rest of the metagame. Is it worth it to be 20% vs the best deck but 80% vs everything else? It might be.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tao
4 Glimmer 2 Cloud is because Cloudpost coming into play tapped was proving to be way too much of a strain, especially against Wasteland decks. Lots of times I'd have a play to make, let's say a Thought-Knot, but needed either a land that comes into play untapped, or an untapped colorless source, and I'd have to pass, and then it'd get wasted, and then bad times. I agree that when the deck is firing correctly on all cylinders, Cloudpost is fine -- like t1 Therapy t2 Vet+flashback, Stirrings or Top or Sakura, play Cloudpost as land for turn is a great play. But I can't reasonably expect this to happen, and I can't build my deck around it. I need my lands to come in untapped to be able to play on curve correctly.
Shaman and Rec Sage are likely awful. They're attempts at making Green Sun less awful in this deck. Green Sun is both the best card and the worst card in the deck. Be able to be Explorer, Empath, or Primeval is great. Not having room for anything else it can be due to space constraints caused by the Eldrazi package is not great.
Smasher is mostly a planeswalker removal spell. It comes in, bashes Liliana or Nahiri or whatever, and then probably dies, and that's fine. 12post is a completely nonfunctional deck right now. it has literally no good matchups left except possibly for us, and even then some Rhino draws can be aggressive enough (let alone with Ruination or From the Ashes in the board) to get the job done. I don't intend on taking 12post's problems, only its solutions. I would much rather be a midrange deck that has an endgame plan as opposed to an endgame deck that tries frantically to not die on the way there. It's possible Smasher should just live in the sideboard, but I do think he has a place here somewhere.
Ancient Stirrings I can sort of agree with you. It's kind of awkward because there are things it can never find: a Vet or a Primeval come prominently to mind. It can find Top, discard (Thought-Knot) utility lands, ramp (cloudpost), sweep (Ugin) or finisher (eldrazi titans). Most of these are mid-late plays -- Stirrings doesn't really have anywhere to go in the early game, which is why I was only on 2 copies. It's possible that the Tron approach is correct, in which cause 4 Stirrings becomes a no-brainer. It's also possible that it's correct to run some kind of early game play to find with it, which could help out.
E.Wit seems fine. I can easily put her in over RecSage and not feel like I'm losing anything. Being able to get back a Stirrings does seem pretty great.
The problem that the Colorless build is having, I think, is the midgame. It has an early plan, sort of -- Vets, Therapy, removal, etc. I think it probably needs a little more to do on turns 1-3, but that might just be me. Its endgame is great. Kozilek is an enormous payoff and Ulamog can dig you out of almost any hole. Primeval for Eye is obviously strong. Ugin is insane. And so on. The problem is what you're doing on the in-between -- it kind of stalls out around turns 4-7, even with the Thought-Knots to help that problem. I place the blame for a lot of that on Green Sun Zenith not having the potatoes to go with the early game (veggies) and late game (steak). Cutting Thought-Knot Seers down in number would help open up more Zenithable room, but Thought-Knot is one of the premier reasons to even play the damn deck, so, I dunno.
I agree, I definitely want more fat. Gitrog replacing Tracker might be fine. I mean, I guess one could just play Big Maverick - play around Gitrog and Titania with Knights and such.
But yes, below 13/14 guys we are cutting it close. Overloading their CJs might have to be where we need to be, though. Combat walkers directly nug Jace and put them on VERY few interactions, even if it costs GSZ slots. We need things to get around mainly STP and Jace bounce, leading us into shroud territory, and Terminus/CJ territory is mainly Walker or token driven. Souls isnt the right card for us, and Equipment, while fine, needs a body to hook up to.
If Walkers become the plan (backed with Needles/Sigardas/Rhino casting), then Games still holds value to nab CJ/Jace/Terminus, and Safekeeper, while bad against Terminus, forces the particular line of exactly that - Terminus. Again, I think with our deck design, the only way is to slowly grind with webs of hate forcing extremely specific interactions. We cant play the Junk disruption and tempo game. We are just far too slow.
Tao, others - thoughts? I think Tao's idea of a wider bredth of walkers isnt terrible. Rhinos help bring the life totals down and ours up from STP to give us room for Truths and Library, while bringing then into closer range for Sorin and token pinging.
This is exactly the issue that I'm trying to get at right now. We're the best Zenith deck, but Zenith is a very questionable card right now.Quote:
Originally Posted by sdematt
Nic Fit used to be all about honey badger. We used to be able to take almost any hit, for an unknown (but large) number of turns. We'd bear the brunt of whatver the opponent was dishing out, and then we'd strike back with supreme and overwhelming power when the time was right. I believe that we can't do this anymore, not on an archetypal-wide note, anyway. BUG Pod might still be able to do execute this plan, but as I've said before, I neither own the cards nor am versed in the skills required to play that deck, so I need to find another way.
So if we can't endure through the opponent's deck anymore, what else can we do? How else can we leverage our advantages?
We need to:Quote:
Originally Posted by Arianrhod
Establish poor/bad matchups
Decipher the problem cards
re-evaluate our strategy
shape the new plan to overcome the obstacles ahead of us
The sky is not falling. Nic Fit is not bad or dying or gone. The meta has shifted to appear better against us than we are formerly used to.
We are the most active thread, filled with some of the best and friendliest personalities I have came across on this website.
Buckle up and grab a pen/paper because we got some thinking to do.
If you've looked at my lists in the past few pages you'll see that I've been experimenting with dropping GSZ, these Stax variants aren't using it at all. On the other hand I use it extensively in SE Fit. It just depends on what you're looking for, but in general I do favor overloading the opponents removal.Quote:
Originally Posted by Arianrhod
Traverse could be ok but you need to build around it. Baleful Strix or Tidehollow Sculler are a requirement. Actually, the problem I ran into with Traverse was that I couldn't find anything I wanted to tutor with it because my non GSZ lists have been drifting towards things like Mentor/Top or Braids/Smokestack interactions.
My answer to the creature/spell tension is to just play more creatures that act as spells. That generally requires a bit more mana but we are a ramp deck so while I like keeping my curve down I'm pretty willing to pay .5-1 mana more for a similar effect on a body instead of the most efficient option.
My answer to there not being enough room though is a bit simplistic (but I think it works) and it's something I mentioned a few weeks ago. If there's not enough room to fit everything in, then why not cut a color? We gain consistency and it reduces the options, which means reducing the chance of making a mistake in the deck building. Your post makes a pretty strong case for Gitrog which takes out Sigarda (Sigarda is strong, but I've never liked that WW cost), and the core of SE Fit at least is all G/B. Perhaps that's the way to go? Load up on a bunch of G/B discard creatures, removal, GSZ targets, and CA? If you don't like straight GB, I think Punishing Fit is probably well positioned right now though Eldrazi seems to be an auto lose.
It feels to me that SFM is one of the more...nimble...versions of Nic Fit, based upon much reading but admittedly little play experience. BUG is close behind simply due to the large amount of card draw that version has available (Strix, Brainstorm, Edric all pretty amazing). I've found that the mana bursts I receive from Vet Explorer can be leveraged very efficiently to either equip dudes, spend mana for top, leave open removal, etc. Equipment also naturally makes for better topdecks when your Witness or 3rd Vet can suit up. It's the difference between being able to do 2-4 small things a turn instead of 1-2 bigger things. The little things can really add up though!
I'm trying to follow Plm/Jain_Mor's advice and am moving away from Rhino in favor of Lingering Souls and slightly more removal and card advantage. I'm starting to wonder if I need to reduce the 4 GSZ down to 3 as I'm seeing less possible targets, and even less that I actually want to get into play on an average turn. I do miss the occasional Meren shenanigans, and also Rhino, but Lingering Souls has been over performing every single time I draw it.
I'll try to get more experience playing it, especially since I'm going crazy trying to nail down a list of any sort for Columbus. Thankfully a guy I'm travelling with has chosen Miracles and so I'll get plenty of practice in.