Originally Posted by
Arianrhod
@Luthiere:
Still name the FoW on the flashback.
Grixis is threat-dense enough that you need to be a bit more worried about being proactive and playing your own gameplan than merely trying to shut their plan down.
Pyromancer is defensible since it strips his clock basically entirely, but if he goes blue card into Gurmag Angler, for example, you're going to be in big trouble. I'd rather he have no interaction and be at the mercy of your power.
Tap better when you play Sneak. You could've played it with a red source open, to bluff having a monster.
Him probing you is greedy as fuck, holy moley. It doesn't matter if you have the monster in hand if he knows it's there or not. He needs to be worried about you having a tutor in hand to go get a big thing (which is what you had). If he Probes and sees Emrakul or Griselbrand or whatever, there's nothing he's going to do about it anyway. Very bad play on his part.
Note that you were fine anyway since you had the Deed to clean up afterward, even if he'd played correctly and held the FoW+blue.
With your list and setup, I'd have boarded as such:
-2 Deathrite
-1 Primeval
-1 Sensei's Top
-1 Nissa, Vital Force
+2 Toxic Deluge
+1 Scavenging Ooze
+2 Carpet of Flowers
They win the Deathrite mirror, so you don't want those floating around. They also are perfectly capable of playing a game of magic under Blood Moon, it's hard, but they can do it, and Moon doesn't impact the board state. It only meaningfully does anything if the board is clear going into Moon.
Primeval is win-more here, so he can come out. Nissa is going to just get chumped forever with Young Pyro, and is also kind of win-more frankly. I like shaving a Top here because their deck is fast, and they aggressively attack your mana, which means you'll have less time to sit around topping. They also frequently will board in Null Rod (which I don't think is great, but, whatever).
Deluges are obviously insane here. Scav Ooze is great at denying Deathrites and re-gaining life later in the game once you're stable. He can also screw up their Cabal Therapies. Beyond that, you either want Carpet or Surgical. I personally prefer Carpet because I like being more proactive, but if you want to be more controlling in the matchup, Surgical is fine to bring in. It messes with their Therapies, is another way for you to get information, messes with their Deathrites, undoes Brainstorm in response to our Therapy, and stalls Gurmag Angler for at least a turn usually, sometimes two if the Surgical clips multiples of the same Fetch, two Ponders, etc.
I don't know that you can keep that hand on the draw. On the play it's great here, but on the draw it's probably too slow. I'd have a hard time mulliganing it, though, to be fair. Also: if that Nissa is either Carpet or Deluge instead of Nissa, your hand is nuts. If Nissa is Surgical you're slightly less happy, but you can attack his manabase a bit and stall his Deathrite while gaining information, which is still fine.
At the point at which the TNN happens, you're on the GSZ@1 for Vet into EoT Decay Vet, untap with Sneak + Inferno plan, which is not really where you want to be at all, but it's the best you've got available with the cards you currently have.
He Forced the Therapy because he expected you to name Force, in order to resolve something big, and he'd rather have the 1/1 Pyro token in play than have 0 cards in hand and 1 extra life (because you'd still name the Delver on the flashback).
I would've plussed Nissa for a turn and then regrow the Titan on the next turn, which is a guaranteed kill unless he draws exactly Lightning Bolt. This way, you put him to 2, but he gets to kill Nissa and you're dependant on your Top.
