@Goblins
I board in all copies of Decay and sometimes the 4th Natural Order. I hold Decay for the Goblin Sharpshooter and pray that they aren't smart enough to hold the Sharpshooter in hand until it can be hasty via Warchief. Otherwise I feel that the matchup is very much in our favor. As long as you don't let them get Sharpshooter active, you can typically assemble a lethal Hoof before they can overwhelm you. Also, be careful about the very first turn. If they lead with Lackey, things can be tricky. I will be more than happy to trade my 1 drop for their Lackey, or I'll just LUL as I drop a Nettle Sentinel/DRS and make them cry.
Lackey and Sharpshooter. That's all you need to be paranoid about.
@Painter
I tested this matchup a little bit after its recent strong finishes. Only for like an hour or something. But I found that I need to dodge the early Blood Moon and the naturally drawn Painter+Stone combo. If they don't have those godhands, then they take a bit too much time to assemble their combo and our fundamental turn happens a turn before theirs. I also have 1 maindeck Viridian Shaman which was useful in slowing them down. You do autolose to a turn 1 Blood Moon though.
@Fetchlands
I run 8 but am looking to go up to 9, if not 10. The biggest issue here is that I'm a spoiled brat and play fully foiled and finding two more foil fetches is a pain in my ass. But I fully understand the grok the merits of playing 8+ fetches. Also, going past 8 fetches for me would involve cutting my 2nd basic Forest or my Savannah or the 2nd Dryad Arbor. None of those seem like exciting cuts at the moment so I'm a bit indecisive right now on where I want to go IRT to the 9th fetch. Also, there have been *plenty* of times when I play a DRS and just have to pray that my opponent has a couple fetches for me to eat. That never feels good.
@Birchlore+Reid Duke, The Guardian of Gaea
I tested 3 of these in my last big tourney (100 players). They were nice to have and definitely allowed me to do some stupid stuff earlier than I normally could. But I never actually felt they helped me win a game I wouldn't otherwise have already been able to win. What I mean by that it is they felt very Win-More. After Reid's finish I've been back to testing 2 Llanowar, 1 Birchlore. I really forgot how much I missed going Forest, Llanowar, go. I think I like it more than leading with Deathrite. The stability of always having a Turn 1 Manadork is just a timeless piece of tech.
Reid's deck was built to be more resilient than explosive. You can tell by the Llanowar count, the high land count, and the no-nonsense list full of 4-ofs. For the larger SCG meta, I think this is the correct way to build the deck. I think the deck designer, Mister Cuneo, wanted to be able to keep every opening 7 he could possibly draw. So he geared the deck to be as reliable as possible.
Also, upping the Llanowar count allows you to more easily recover from board wipes and win through grindy attrition matches. The difference is rather subtle, but in the matches where it counts, it really counts.
@ the SCG match right now
The player is clearly on a budget list. 2 Cradles. No arbor. No Crop Rotations to make up for the other Cradles missing. Fauna Shaman. Emrakul. I think he just borrowed the deck the day of the event. Or he just started playing the deck fairly recently. Or he is just a kitchen table dude. And all of those are okay. I still hope he X-0s the event with a suboptimal build and questionable plays. LOL. That would fill my heart with joy.
