[Deck] Nic Fit (GBx Explorer Zenith Control)

The dedicated T1 decks (SI, Belcher, All-Spells) approach 40-55% for T1 (which might result in some Goblins, for Belcher, not the end of the game).
Decks like Tin Fins and TES are probably 20-35%.

In my rather limited experience of tinkering with BUG Fit builds and trying to jam Force of Will, I find myself quickly adding sub-ideal cards in order to fit 18 blue cards in the deck. You reach a certain mass of Coiling Oracle, Baleful Strix, and Brainstorm - all great cards - that your fair games have too high a concentration of low-power "value" plays.

I don't think T1 combo decks are prevalent and fast enough to require Force, and, if they were, this would not be the deck to be playing.

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Originally Posted by EpicLevelCommoner

Quick question: how often do the various combo decks win turn 1 on the play? Thinking of swapping out my Force of Wills for Thoughtseizes in the side for consistency purposes, but if that Turn 1 Win % is too great, then I'll have to reconsider including FoW.

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How about flusterstorm in the board?

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Originally Posted by Cire_dk

How about flusterstorm in the board?

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Flusterstorm is a great card for combo hate--particularly against ANT if you can float it with a top. TES can play around it with silence or swarm, but it can still be effective against their cantrips. What you really need, though, is a clock in addition to the disruption. A clique might be nice, as you can get it online turn 2 in a perfect magical Christmas world. Also be careful about fetching islands against carpet of flowers.

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Originally Posted by Star|Scream

Flusterstorm is a great card for combo hate--particularly against ANT if you can float it with a top. TES can play around it with silence or swarm, but it can still be effective against their cantrips. What you really need, though, is a clock in addition to the disruption. A clique might be nice, as you can get it online turn 2 in a perfect magical Christmas world. Also be careful about fetching islands against carpet of flowers.

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I've mentioned before but Riptide Pilferer has been really good for me, worth considering if you're playing blue. Though even if not, headhunter is the original black version and does exactly the same thing.

One noob question, i started reading the primer about Nic fit(punishing fit primarily) but in some of the match up notes Kessig wolf Run is mentioned , but that card isn't present in any of the three lists is that a remain of an older list?

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Originally Posted by Zorker

One noob question, i started reading the primer about Nic fit(punishing fit primarily) but in some of the match up notes Kessig wolf Run is mentioned , but that card isn't present in any of the three lists is that a remain of an older list?

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That's because Tao does not like it but it is a house in punishing Fit as you are most likely on the "Protect the Troll" plan.
Kessig + Thrun will pretty end games very fast.
I'm belonging to the ones cutting phyrexian/volrath for Kessig.

Personal preference I guess but having a hexproof trample beast is amazing in a lot of MU, even more since TNN's printing.

thanks

Yeah, I played with Wolf-Run and I have cut it since I made the primer. I try to update the SB plans whenever I change the list but there might be some hiccups in it like with the Wolf Run.

Will also have to do some testing and Sideboarding against UWR Delver. Really glad that UWR is a thing now because it seems like a very favorable matchup. I can't see how Punishing Nic Fit would ever lose G1 because it can just kill all their creatures with Fire, Decay, Lili and Deed. G2 and G3 Meddling Mage might be annoying but it should not be too bad either because we get Red Blasts and Golgari Charm.

Chris Higashi top 64'd the invitational with Scapewish. Hopefully we'll get a report -- I know Chris reads the thread, but he only posts infrequently.

I've replaced both Phyrexian Tower and Kessig with two Treetop Villages in P-Fire and I've had good success with it. Makes the deck a less swingy and applies a bit more consistent pressure.

Sweet to see Scapewish make top 64 of the Invitational.

I played at local 28 man legacy event today, bringing David Gleicher's Explorer Pod list. I drew the first round on time against an Elves! player. I then went on to beat Dredge, Sneak and Show, losing to ANT before finally beating UWR Delver to make the top 8, getting 5th seed. In the top 8 i beat Omnitell, ANT and then finally Dredge. I got first place and a tundra and a flooded strand. I ran into a whole lot of combo today, making me glad that I chose to run BUG Pod and not Scapewish for once. It's funny that Wood Elves seem to be somewhat good against combo, both ramping and providing a 3 drop body to pod into Glen Elendra Archmage. I may write out some details tomorrow.

SvKnoe, congratz n the finish. I did not expect the list to do that well against combo so well done. Which list did you run. Standard Pod fit. Any ideas or recommendations based on your games?
Looking forward to your report.

I played Scapewish for the first time on Saturday and top-4'd my local. I played this list:

4 Veteran Explorer
2 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Eternal Witness
2 Huntmaster of the Fells
2 Thragtusk
1 Primeval Titan

3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Burning Wish
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Pernicious Deed
2 Scapeshift

4 Taiga
3 Badlands
2 Bayou
1 Stomping Ground
2 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
1 Phyrexian Tower
3 Mountain
3 Forest
2 Swamp
3 Verdant Catacombs

Sideboard
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Relic of Progenitus
3 Duress
1 Thoughtseize
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Massacre
1 Damnation
1 Scapeshift
3 Slaughter Games

I beat budget ReAnimator, big Zoo, and Affinity without dropping a game - although I won several games by ripping Wish/Scapeshift off the top when facing lethal damage. I then scooped a friend playing Jund into top 4, we played it out for fun and I narrowly lost 1-2 (the 4-Liliana draw is pretty much unbeatable lol). After the tournament I played a bunch of test games against Esper Stoneblade (pre and post-board) and I'm pretty sure I won every game. The deck seems very strong although I dodged the other two combo players in the room (TES would have been very unpleasant). I will be removing the Grafdigger's cage for another Relic as I forgot about its poor interaction with Green Sun's Zenith (derp). I may also cut either one yard hate piece or one piece of discard in order to make room for either an Innocent Blood or a Chainer's Edict.

Well i played the deck "punishing fit", in an 8 person legacy event since it was my first time playing i went rather poorly 0-1-4

The draw was because i went to time with a Reanimator( Round one he won woth a turn 2 blazing archon, i didn't draw any removal)
I Lost 2-1 aginst Jund
I lost 2-1 Against junkblade
I lost 2-1 against shardless
I lot 2-1 Against dredge.

Well what i can say i really like the deck i just need more practice with it.

Star player against every deck was thrun.

Thank you, Cire_dk!

I played the following list:

3 Deathrite Shaman
4 Veteran Explorer
4 Baleful Strix
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Eternal Witness
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Wood Elves
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Murderous Redcap
1 Sower of Temptation
1 Acidic Slime
1 Shriekmaw
1 Thragtusk
1 Grave Titan

2 Pernicious Deed
1 Recurring Nightmare
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Green Sun’s Zenith
4 Brainstorm
1 Abrupt Decay
3 Birthing Pod

2 Bayou
3 Forest
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
2 Swamp
3 Tropical Island
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Watery Grave

SIDEBOARD
2 Envelop
1 Thoughtseize
1 Golgari Charm
3 Riptide Pilferer
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
1 Pernicious Deed
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Notion Thief
4 Force of Will


Round 1: I kept a good looking therapy, explorer and deed hand. My opponent won the die roll, going zenith for dryad arbor. I smelled Elves! and played therapy for Glimpse of Nature, and hit. The flashback on turn 2 hit some elf. I believe he had a fairly good hand. I managed to get a deed into play turn 2. With deed in play I can stop him from comboing, and he has to pressure me to force me to blow the deed. He played a lot more carefully and only played the insect after i played the deed. I have never played against elves before, which led me to make a gigantic mistake on turn 3. He had deathrite, symbiote and visionary out. I had to get rid of the symbiote to not get grinded down by it and visionary. I had 5 lands in play and i could play sower of temptation or shriekmaw to solve the problem. Shriekmaw is a faster clock, so I opted for that. He naturally bounced his visionary in response to the trigger. I did not belive that he would manage to kill me in one turn of just a deathrite in play, after me hitting twice on therapy. Apparantly he could. Deed for 1 would easily have kept me safe.

I can't remember what I boarded in this match. Thoughtseize, Charm, Deed and Jitte seem good to me.

In game 2 i opened therapy on glimpse, hitting twice. The flashback took a natural order. I can't clearly remember the rest of this game. I belive that Redcap killed a few elves, and since he did not have an engine any more that was enough for me to have time to kill him. Time was called before game 3, making the match a draw. Bummer. I think it is a bad match up, though deed seems very good.

0-0-1


Round 2: My opponent won the die roll and was playing Dredge, what I assumed was a bad match up. I think that he killed me fairly quickly. This tournament did not appear to be going that well.

+1 Jitte
+1 Pernicious Deed
-1 Acidic Slime
-1 Shriekmaw

In game 2 I opened on a turn 1 Deathrite, and my opponent had a slow start. With a deed I could prevent him from attempting to swarm me with zombies. Eventually I managed to grind him out with Sower of Temptation and Recurring Nightmare, stealing his creatures and saccing them for value, as well as exiling his bridges.
For the last game, he played a land and passed. Not realising what he had, I played my turn 1 Deathrite. He EOT Firestorm for 3, discarding three dredgers. Luckily I drew a brainstorm, which found another Deathrite. His dredges were pretty mediocre, and I was able to grind him out again.

This match up seems a lot better then I first thought it was. Deed keeps the zombies away, while Deathrite either mises him out of the game if he has too few fetches, or at least keeps the Ichorids under control. If I have to deed the board, and he either gets to keep his bridges or gets a fresh batch of zombies, I think I lose. Therefore it is important to constantly keep his graveyard clear of bridges. Him having 1 is acceptable, if you are only able to sac a creature once. Therapy, Pod, Nightmare and Redcap gives me 9 ways to clear his graveyard of bridges post board.

1-0-1


Round 3: I won the die roll. My opponents turn 1 Flooded Strand and pass made me fear Miracles, which seems not that favorable (though I have never even tested against it with Pod). I had a cabal therapy that I could play on turn 2, which would have named Jace. Since he could not cast Jace on turn 2 anyways, I decided to wait for information of what he was playing. Turn two he brainstormed of another fetch and cracked his strand to play a Ponder. He had fetched for two basic Islands. Combined with the ponder that seemed to indicate combo, probably of some show and tell variety. I played my therapy, intending to name show and tell. He forced it, pitching force. That made it seem likely to me that he was on Sneak and Show, since I believe that Omnitell usually plays Pact of Negation instead (I might very well have been wrong). Sneak attack kills faster, and I had Grave Titan in hand, so I decided to name that on the flashback. I hit, seeing Sneak Attack, Show and Tell, Emrakul, Griselbrand and City of traitors. If he would show emrakul into play, I could race it with Grave Titan. Since he also had Griselbrand, Grave Titan was not enough. He found another show and tell with the draw, and I was able to get him to 2 life before I lost. Perhaps it would actually have been better to name Griselbrand, so that I could race Emrakul if he decided to show it in to play.

I boarded in almost everything, and boarded out the value creatures. Post board the plan is to pressure his hand with discard and Riptide Pilferers, while holding up counters to stop him from going of too soon. Eventually you want to land a Glen Elendra Archmage, which is usually game.

I played my turn 1 Deathrite, turn 2 Riptide Pilferer, keeping up force and Envelop. On turn 3 I spent 2 mana on something irrelevant and he discarded a force to the pilferer, leading me to believe that he had more counter magic in hand. My hand included Force, Envelop, Sower of Temptation and no other blue cards. On his turn 3 he led with a probe. At this point I was faced with a decision. I thought that he had counters. If he went for it I could counter twice, but I did not want to pitch the sower or let him know that I had it. I fetched to pay for my Envelop to counter his Probe. He dazed back, floating 1 mana. I paid for it with Deathrite. He decided to go for it blindly. I expect that he had some counter back up. He brought Griselbrand for show and tell, but I had Sower of Temptation, which won the game. It might have been a lot safer to go for the counter and pressure plan, but this line was too sweet for me to resist.

In game three the standard discard and pressure plan was successful.

2-0-1


Round 4: I got paired against a friend who I knew was on ANT. He killed me quickly. I boarded in my hate in order to win game 2 and 3. From testing I like my chances versus ANT post board. I got an unkeepable one lander at 7 and no lands at 6. I finally kept a suspect 5 of 3 lands and 2 explorers, hoping to draw therapy into Glen Elendra to win. I bricked on therapy and hit on Archmage. Then he killed me. I could have mulled to 4, but then it becomes very difficult to ever cast archmage. As casting Archmage is very important in the match up, I decided to keep.

Now I had to win the last round to be able to make top 8.

2-1-1


Round 5: I finally got paired against a fair deck, UWR delver. I won both games fairly easily. Compared to RUG I find it most comfortable to not have to deal with stifle. Their soft counters I can almost always play around, if it is important. His True-Name Nemeses were late in the mail, so he was on Geist. It was not relevant, though, as True-Name would actually have been easier to race on the board which he cast Geist.

3-1-1


My tie breakers were good enough for 5th seed. At least I won't have to play the ANT player again, since he was undefeated.


Top 8

Quarterfinals: I got paired against a player who I knew was on Omnitell. I lost to him in my last top 8, when I was playing Scapewish. He opted to go first, and killed me before I could find my one Glen Elendra Archmage. This was expected, but I felt fairly comfortable for game 2 and 3. I have tested close to 10 post board games against Omnitell, and I only lost one of them. I think that the general discard, counter and then Glen Elendra soft lock plan is very sound. Acidic Slime is also hilarious.

In game 2 I got to be on the play and kept a hand that was keepable, but that's about it. It had some lands and a pilferer at least. He forced the pilferer, which ended up being just fine, since I immediatly drew another one. Finding some of the 13 sideboard cards is generally not that hard, so I was able to control him until I landed an archmage. We played a few more turns until my deck of expensive 1/1s and 2/2s was able to kill him, since he was unable to cast important spells.

The third game is a little more scary, since they are on the play. Most hands do fine, though. But my hand, on the other hand, was a beautiful zero lander. As was the next. I kept a hand of three lands, GSZ and something irrelevant, hoping to get there. I drew a brainstorm as my first draw. I had a fetch, but opted to play it at the end of his turn. That is because I only had 5 cards, so shuffling away one more had less of an impact, and I needed interaction fast. Therefore the tempo advantage is more important than usual. The brainstorm yielded a therapy and another brainstorm. I shuffled away the irrelevant card and therapied him on turn to. They generally need Enter the Infinite to win, so I named that. Against an explorer deck they can feasibly cast Dream Halls, providing redundancy for show and tell omni. I hit two enter the infinites, which proved to be crucial later. He had the turn 3 kill, had I not hit anything on brainstorm. On turn 3 I slipped. I had Wood Elves and Pod in hand and intended to play Wood Elves and then Pod it into Glen Elendra next turn. I then sacced Wood Elves, my only creature, both in play and in hand, to flashback cabal therapy. "Luckily" for me he had recovered from my discard the last turn, and had the kill again. My therapy bought me more time, of course. I drew another Pod. Any 2 drop or better would win. I draw a 1 drop and pod twice getting strix and then witness getting brainstorm to dig for action. He resolves show and tell for omniscience. Ugh. He luckily can't kill me. He wishes for rushing river and bounces both of my pods, countering both of them om my next turn. I however, had a third Pod. Which he countered. Things were starting to look very grim, staring down that Omniscience. And he drew brainstorm! Cunning Wish for Intuition. Sigh, I guess I'll have to contend with a single Theros pack for top 8. He cast intuition. I might as well make him play it out. He then found Intuition, Snapcaster, Snapcaster. I had hit 2 Enter the Infinites on turn 1. He only had 2 left! Ha! I then looked at my remaining resources. Some lands and my initial GSZ. Having gotten quite tired during the day, I thought long and hard about if I could use it for anything. Deathrite or something else? Hmm? Is there anything else? I was about to get the deathrite, before I remembered Acidic slime! GSZ for slime, destroy omniscience. Since he only had 3 lands and then nothing I was able to kill him long before he could combo again.

The last game was very close, and fairly interesting. I think that Omnitell may actually be a somewhat good match up. 2-1


Semifinals: I then got paired against the top seed, who was the storm player that I lost to in round 4. I kept a good hand with therapy, explorer and good possibilities for an early Glen Elendra Archmage. He even mulliganed to 6. He led with probe into Ponder, keeping the cards. I played my therapy turn 1. I think that LED and Infernal Tutor are the two most important cards against us in ANT. I generally like to name LED, but since he had seen my therapy, I assumed that he would have played his LED. Therefore I named Tutor, and hit. The rest of his hand was land, dark ritual, dark ritual, duress. This game seemed to be going very well. I could take the rituals the next turn and the duress did not matter. Sadly he had Ad Nauseam on top and killed me turn 2.

Game 2 I kept a good hand and we quickly arrived at position where I passed on turn 3 with a pilferer and deathrite in play. I had one untapped land and a hand of Brainstorm, Force of Will, Envelop and Glen Elendra Archmage. On his turn he led with a dark ritual. He only had one black source, if he did not have any more in hand. I considered forcing it for a second, but opted not to. He then took my force and envelop with duress and cabal therapy. Then he comboed off with LED and tutor. With tutor on the stack my hand was archmage and brainstorm. I brainstormed off of deathrite, looking for one of my 4 outs (3 force, 1 envelop). Luckily I hit Force and Strix, putting Archmage as the first card on top. I forced and played archmage for the win.

In game 3 I had a lot of discard. Both therapy and riptide pilferer. I played his two LEDs to protect them and I was able to get him hellbent. Unfortunately one of those cards was Past in Flames. Luckily when he cracked a LED to flash it back, I had just drawn envelop to counter it. Meanwhile i had beaten him down to 14. He drew Ad Nauseam of the top and could crack LED with it on the stack. I had no disruption. Luckily, he killed himself.

I was a bit lucky in game 2 and 3, but I had just enough disruption to make the needed events actual outs. ANT is the match up that I have tested the most with BUG Pod, probably 15-20 post board games. In addition to the standard anti combo plan, scavenging ooze can also shut down Past in Flames. Post board, I like the Pod side of the match up, but not by a lot. I like this match up a lot less than the Omnitell match up. It is probably in their favour, but it is still completely winnable. 2-1


Finals: The other player to make top 2 was the Dredge player that I had faced in the swiss. He was the 8th seed, so I got to play first. I believe that I led with deathrite into turn three Deed once again. This time, however, his deck was not failing him. He dredged multiple narcomoebas, sac outlets, bridges and ichorids and kept rolling. I was eventually able to kill all but 1 of his bridges and had deathrite, strix and anoth couple of bodies. Even though I was at 5 life after he attacked for his turn, it seemed that I would be able to stabilize. He thought for a while, before deciding to sac his 3 zombies to dread return Griselbrand. I had lost my strix blocking a zombie. It was not favourable for him to draw cards at the time, so he passed the turn. I had another strix and my Phantasmal Image, which I had held for a while. I copied Griselbrand, and played the strix. The text coverage team liked the phantasmal image. His deck was mostly gone, I had deed so he could not swarm me. He could attack with 3 ichorids per turn but that nets me 1 life. He could not attack with Griselbrand since strix would trade, allowing my griselbrand to take over the game. After a good while of thought, he decided that he did not have any outs to my board, and scooped.

Game 2 was quick and not at all as grand as the first one. He played a land and passes. I passed back. He Firestormed EOT to discard two dredgers. He did not hit any more dredgers in the top 12 cards of his deck. I had my scavenging ooze in my opening hand, which completely shut down his game. The ooze got large and killed him.

I had imagined that dredge would be a fairly miserable match up, but after winning 4 out of 5 games against it, I am not so sure. I may just have gotten lucky, though. The deathrites and the ooze help a lot.


The deck surprised my by beating a couple of match ups that I thought would be fairly bad. I liked that I could beat combo, while still eating the delver decks alive. As for potential changes, I am rather clueless. The most deck "innovation" I have ever done is to cut Arianrhod's Scapewish list down to 60 cards. I like all of the cards in the main deck (except for the Watery Grave, which should obviously be an Underground Sea). I like the sideboard as well. Initially I thought that Notion Thief would be too cute, but he has proven to be good against all Jace decks, especially Shardless BUG. As I understand it they can't choose to not cast a suspended visions, so he doesn't even need to be cast in response to brainstorm to be a blow out. They can hardly get rid of him as well. I also like him against every combo deck that plays cantrips. Since your plan is to shut them down completely, turning off their cantrips when they are hellbent is very good. You can also catch the odd Griselbrand draw 7 or Enter the Infinite (though that may be quite a risk) which is hilarious, but not the function of the card. The Riptide Pilferers are very good. Forces are nice, allowing you to tap out. I would not consider Pod or blue without them (though I have no tournament experience with white pod, to be fair). As for what is missing in the sideboard, at first as was very worried by the lack of graveyard hate. It did not turn out to be an issue, though. Against the grindier decks I would perhaps like a second recurring nightmare, as it is the nuts. I don't know how to find space for it, though.

I liked the deck in a mixed meta, with both a lot of fair decks and a lot of combo. If the meta was mostly fair (which mine was until recently), I would stick to Scapewish. Scapewish demolishes all of the fair decks. I have found pod to occasionally struggle against some of the mid range decks. From testing I am not even sure that I like the Shardless BUG match up. If you can stick a Pod, you usually win. If not, you usually lose (barring Notion Thief blow outs). With Scapeshift I have never lost a tounament match to Goblins or Merfolk. In my limited testing against them with Pod, I have lost more than I have won. That may be due to inexperience with the deck and my Scapewish play style which is mostly focused on stalling into a combo kill versus those decks.

I will be attending the Legacy GP in Paris in February. I consider playing BUG Pod, but I do not know what the general European meta is like.

Nice report. It is fairly impressive to beat so many Combo matchups in a row and it is certainly a good sign for the deck.

thanks for the report. May I ask why there are no Underground Seas in your list?

I only own one, and I had lent it to the ANT player. It is only very occasionally awkward for me to not have a proper Underground Sea in the deck.

I am pleasently surprised about how good it is against combo, compared to the other Nic Fit variants I have tried. I not sure, but it is possible that I would rather face Omnitell than a random opponent. Almost everything seems quite beatable. I guess that I would be destoyed by 12post, but I don't worry about that.

There were a number of lines that I had not considered before. I find it particularily funny that Grave titan will race Emrakul, given only a few permanents on your board.

Thanks for the report Svknoe, great to see you had some success with the list and that the anti-combo SB is working out.
I agree with your evaluations of the matchups. Dredge is favorable due to all the graveyard hate, deeds, and ability to sacrifice creatures to get bridges out of the yard.
Show and Tell variants are decent as well with this SB since there's all the disruption plus the ability to randomly get them by putting in a Sower of Temptation or something off of Show and Tell.
Storm combo decks are the scariest for sure, but still managable postboard.
Additional spot removal (like another Abrupt Decay) could help a bit with the fair matchups. I agree though, you give up a little bit in the fair matchups by adding blue in order to help with the combo matchups. For the European metagame this seems worth it, because from my North American perspective it seems like they really like their combo decks in Europe.

Right now I'm experimenting with a 4 color version splashing white for Orzhov Pontiff to combat True Name Nemesis. As an added bonus, we get Harmonic Sliver and Gaddock Teeg/Ethersworn Cannonist out of the board. However, this might be too much for the mana to handle. I'm still testing it out to see if that's really the case. With Pontiff in the deck, I think it makes Golgari Charm unnecessary so that frees up a sideboard slot. I was also unimpressed with Notion Thief and have cut it, mainly because the True-Name decks seem to have really reduced Shardless BUG's popularity.

I am glad to hear that I have figured out the main concerns in the match ups. I am not certain that additional spot removal is the solution for the fair deck match ups. I very broad terms there are the tempo delver decks and the value mid range decks. Abrupt Decay is good against the tempo decks, but the tempo match up seems very good already. Compared to other Nic Fit versions BUG Pod gets to play Deathrite and Strix, which are almost absurdly good against the delver decks. If you simply play around their soft counters, primarily daze, then it almost seems difficult lose. I admit that I have not played very much Delver with BUG Pod, but I have played it a number of times with other Nic Fit decks and this one seems even better. Our cards are much better than theirs, and with Deathrite and Strix, our cards are better from the beginning. Therefore additional is not needed against them, even though it would further skew the match up towards us, I suppose. I do not as of yet know too much about TNNs impact on these match ups. As long as it is not equiped I think that the deck is fast and big enough to run right over its head.

Versus the mid range decks the problem is not that we cannot answer their threats, but that their cards are better than ours. That is not strictly true, as our strategy is more powerful overall. We have a few absurdly powerful cards that put their decks to shame, such as Grave Titan and Grave Titan. But if they counter or discard our key cards, we are faced with the problem that Shardless (not to mention Jace) agent is better than Redcap. We can kill their stuff and stabilize, but in the end it is us that runs out of cards. Therefore I think that additional spot removal may be detrimental to our match up versus the blue mid range decks. I believe that it may be possible that we have a good match up against regardless. I think that the most important thing in these match ups is to use cabal therapy to protect your bombs and resolve them. This deck is so value ridden that Jace may be acceptable. In testing I have, from an empty board, grinded out an opposing board of both Jace and Elspeth. Resolve a Pod and almost any creatures and Jace is not that bad, contrary to my experiences with other Nic Fit decks. Although you don't want Jace to happen, by all means.

I am interested in seeing how the 4 colour version turns out. The white splash options are powerful. However, I think that the mana will not be stable enough to warrant the splash. Getting mana screwed by an unstable mana base and wasteland seems a bit too much. If it works, I would like to try it, though. Do you think that you would have to cut back on the number of basics in order to support a stable 4 colour mana base?

Regarding Notion Thief you may be right. I think that the local meta adapts a little bit slower than the SCG tournaments, as people are still building Shardless BUG decks. I'll see if the meta changes, but keeping trying it for a while more.

EDIT: I have mainly played against combo, both in testing and in the tournament. My thoughts on the fair match ups may very well just be wrong.