Maybe add one BW dual and run Perish? Since zoo is such a hard matchup it might be worth it.
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Maybe add one BW dual and run Perish? Since zoo is such a hard matchup it might be worth it.
Hi,
I watched your playtesting and better understood the value of card advantage when paired with board pressure in legacy. Card advantage is super good in this format because most opponents have less card advantage than you do.
I dislike all of the trolls who have dirtied this thread.
I have some ideas for improving your deck and will provide justifications. I do not have exact numbers attached to these ideas because I can't be sure about that without testing. These are not suggestions. I am not qualified to make suggestions for changes without testing first. This is just hypothesis and theory:
Adds:
3-4 Spellstutter Sprite : You said at the beginning that you want spell creatures. Spells are cheap in legacy, so this often functions as a counterspell creature. I also think that flash dudes are synergistic with your instant speed answers (swords, countermagic) as well as instant speed activated abilities (wayfarer, seer). This guy also wears equipment well.
3-4 Mutavault : A criticism I always had of the threshold decks was their 17 land count which resulted in more "no land mulligans" than I was comfortable with. As a result, I always play at least 20 lands in my decks. This particular land allows the sprite to counter 2s, 3s, and 4s when paired with Wayfarer and may improve the goblins or fish matchups (it is all creature types). It can also wear equipment in a pinch. I feel that he can replace creatures in the previous build because of these reasons. This type of creature also synergizes with the new "Flash" style for the deck, playing during your opponents turn.
2-3 Vendilion Clicque: I saw a lot of pro tour players that swore by this guy, at least for extended format. It feels cluncky to me to tap out at the draw step and lose your spell pierce mana, but he feels like he becomes very good because of how he disrupts your opponent in various situations and how well he wears equipment.
1 Basilisk Collar: For me, equipping this to knight of the white orchid is all the reason I need to play this card. Further reasons include trinket mage-tutorability and situations where you trade with Knight of the reliquary or an Inkwell leviathan after activating Fathom Seer. This also is a step toward solving the mentioned "Stoneforge mystic" problem of having a Jitte in play and stoneforge in hand. This card just feels right in this deck because all of your creatures netted you at least a card, so trade them with your opponent's best creature.
1 Trinket Mage: He seems to be a stoneforge mystic-esque guy that becomes better with a certain array of tutor targets. He also fetches up relic, which wins you a goyf war. This is very good I think. You play a dude that nets you a card and beats goyf in combat.
1 Engineered Explosives: I would never feel comfortable playing an aggro deck that didn't have a maindeck out to Humility/Moat. This also answers other random stuff. Mox Diamond allows you to potentially crank it up to 5 (especially if you splash 1x Undergound Sea). Also EE for zero beats Belcher's goblins and dredge's Zombies in game 1.
2-3 Mox Diamond: Adding the mutavaults to your lands allows you to play this. I feel that this could be better than vial in this deck. It permanently increases your land count with a wayfarer in play. When I watched your rounds, I saw you flip fathom seer and not be able to cast the cards that you just drew. This gets rid of that extra land you just put into your hand and lets you cast your spells the same turn. It can be fetched with Trinket mage. Unlike Vial, it allows you to play non-creature spells for a "reduced cost". With this in play with Wayfarer, you are essentially reducing your activation cost of wayfarer to 0 compared to not having the Mox. Also, do not discount the ability to go Turn 1 Mox, land, and then have daze or Sprite in Hand. The Turn 1 "sprite, counter your 1 drop" play could be better than time walk in some cases. A fair criticism of this card is that "it is card disadvantage" and "you won't have other lands in your hand", but I don't see it as such in the context of the rest of your deck. It will more often NET your card advantage AND acceleration than otherwise. The other criticism is that "aether vial allowed you to slip past counterbalance and other counterspells". I think that the addition of engineered explosives nullifies this effect, at least with respect to counterbalance. That more of your guys have flash means that they are harder to disrupt and have some of the power of the instant speed vial-tap.
1 Relic of Progenitus: You NEED to not only be able to answer goyf, but to laugh at him. This is also the bane of a new horizons type deck. Without this card in your maindeck with trinket mage, I might just as soon play goyf and splash green because HE IS THAT GOOD, but with this, I think you can own him. To be fair, Grunt does an ok job at answering goyf, but with this, trinket mage, and 2 grunts, you have 4 "goyf trumps" to match their 4 goyfs, so they can't claim a probabilistic advantage over you by playing goyfs.
1-2 Jace, The Mind Sculptor: His abilities shine in this deck. He can bounce your own comes-into-play guys, saves your grunt from self-destruction, can brainstorm away the lands that Wayfarer or Seer put into your hand, and he wins the game. The prerequisite for a blue deck to play him is that it has to be able to defend him. You play utility creatures that can block favorably in combat. That is enough. The one restriction against playing him is an often low land count on the board. Diamond helps you cast him, though.
1 Karakas: To bounce Emrakul, Iona, Vendilion Clicque, (and Mangara of Corondor if that is brought in from the board as a utility creature.)
Subtracts:
1 Jitte (so you have 1 Jitte and 1 collar): This is a step toward solving the 2 Jitte problem.
4 Serra Avenger: If I don't desperately need to race, I don't like creatures that lack comes into play effects or activated abilities and are smaller than goyf. This just seems on average to be out-classed by Vendilion Clicque anyway. In general, I am in favor of cutting white cards for blue cards because it shifts your mana base towards blue which makes fathom seer and daze more reliable and gives you more options when pitching to force.
3 Aether Vial: I prefer Diamond over it. If this were a fish deck, I would not. But this is a good old Land Tax / Gush deck, so My instincts tell me that Diamond is very good. Incidentally, Land Tax and Gush are my two favorite cards, so mad props to you for reinventing the two into a deck.
4 Mother of Ruins: I prefer Sprite over her because the spells that she is good at giving protection from, sprite is good at countering. Sprite counters other stuff too. The flash ability means he is not only a preventative wall but a suprise disruption spell that can be a thorn in combo's side as well. This also decreases the need for Aether Vial, as your guys naturally have flash. Sprite is probably better at wearing equipment, if not giving support to someone else who wears equipment while it is in play.
1 Fathom Seer: I feel that it is probably not good if you flip fathom seer and draw another. Also Jace being able to bounce your guy means you can get extra seer activations if you really want to. This is the cut I am LEAST sure of.
1 Land for the karakas (not sure which one, but the lands could be shifted more towards the island side of things as now the only WW spells you play are Knight of the White orchid, which may be better as a 2 of with basilisk collar in the deck)
Sideboard Thoughts (no numbers here, just ideas):
Mangara of Corondor: The ability to tap and bounce him with Karakas seems absurd in some slow control matchup. I like Jace for the same reason I like him in the board: I feel better about a deck if I know it can remove all of my opponents permanents and their deck from the game given enough time at the cost of 3-4 slots in total)
Pithing Needle: I can't list all the things that this stops. Trinket Mage gets it as well, so you are boarding in 2 effectively. I am a big fan of 1x trinket mage because it DOUBLES the probability of hitting any of the 1x bullets he can search for.
Serenity: Vs Stax, Enchantress, and Affinity. While there is collateral damage associated with this, there is probably more damage on their side.
Curfew: With all of the comes into play guys like sprite, playing a curfew against reanimator is a 2 or 3 for 1. I can also imagine this being good against Zoo precombat main phase in response to a removal spell on your spell stutter.
Noetic Scales: This is an underplayed bullet against reanimator. I am not sure whether yours is the right deck for this as the mana cost is high, but you need to up your "leviathan" answers. Reanimator IS the best deck in the format, but you MUST cheese wins from them.
(If you decide to splash black) Extirpate. This and back to basics are the two best cards against Lands and Agg Loam. I also think that this is good against reanimator, as they are more set up to answer crypts, relics, macabre, and karakas with their Needles and Null Rods. Their only way to for reanimator to interact with this is thoughtseize (they run 2-3) and show and tell ( they run 1- 2) (not mystical tutor of course!!), so if you put 4 of them in your board you are on parity with them. You could probably run 3 and still be fine with 1 crypt and 1 relic. I would splash black just for this card (not for duress or thoughseize). You are a card advantage aggro deck and a lot of the engines that negate this advantage are ruined by this card. Splashing a third color by adding 1 underground sea is easier with Diamonds in the Deck.
(If you decide to splash black) Engineered Plague. Having mox diamond in the deck is enough reason for me to want to sideboard this in. A second turn plague is MUCH better than a 3rd turn plague against Fish or goblins.
(If you decide to splash black) Dark Confidant: I don't like him in aggressive matchups, but just like ANT does, you can sideboard him in against control decks as a "swords me now" target. Again, Mox Diamond makes him "twice as good" (assuming he lives for 1 turn). I remember you saying you had trouble with Bob from Nasif's supreme blue. Your own bob is as good an answer to their bob as any I can think of. The fact that you can equip him is a trump.
(If you decide to splash black) Vindicate: I feel that this card is underplayed. It is an "all purpose answer" and kills lands, which is a substrategy of your deck. Again, Mox Diamond makes this much better. This or Mangara could take your "all purpose answer" slot.
..........
That is all that I have for now. Thank you for your time and patience. I wish you the best of luck with the deck.
--Zach Noyes
Zach-
question for you. have you actually played with the deck?
I would be shocked that anyone who had played with the deck extensively would suggest cutting moms and avengers entirely. They are a huge, huge part of the deck.
Spellstutter sprite suffers from the problem of making your opponent's removal a counterspell. It's great in theory. In practice, it's failed on me more than it's worked in legacy.
There is no two jitte problem. We had a few issues before we had SFM, but now, it's rare that you really have a problem.
This land already gets land flooded enough as it is with 17 lands, advocating going up to 20 is probably not the best idea. Inexplicably adding 3 mox diamonds to the already very tight deck doesn't make any sense.
Noetic Scales isn't played against reanimator because it's too expensive. They can power out an iona turn 1/2 with some regularity. Relying on a 4-drop to save you isn't probably the best master plan.
Play the maindeck that one of the experienced players here has for a while, and don't muck with it (aside from meta required SB changes). Once you have some experience with the deck, come back and talk to us.
Thanks for the uhm... whatever they are.
Not really iso them, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by znoyes
All it took was playing one round vs fish to understand why the Mom and Angel are good in combat. Spell stutter sprite stuck in my hand while he had a vial and he didn't cast 1cc spells for the rest of the game. I won with Jitte on Fathom Seer under his own standstill. He played badly.
The mox diamonds were not random: I thought they might prove superior as acceleration over Vial given what was in the rest of the deck. But this is not the case. I remember them being used in Land Tax Decks to reduce the number of lands that tax saw in play and get rid of the excess lands in hand. I saw that the gush effect of seer put excess lands into your hand as well.
I have a suggestion to make the Zoo matchup better.
In my Faery deck I've been playing Perimeter Captain in the sideboard to stall untill I can get Grunt or Jitte out.
Maybe this would be good for this deck too?
The card is awesome, blocking many things Zoo will throw at you and granting life at the same time.
Mostly it ended up blocking i.e. Nacatl and being bolted, resulting in 6 prevented damage, technically 8 since you gain to life, and swaping 1 for 1 with the bolt.
This.Quote:
Originally Posted by junor
I've played the zoo-matchup quite a bit and Captain is really a life saver. With 2 or more captains out, the zoo player will hesitate to attack att all.
The card is esentially a 2-for-1 against zoo. If they dont nacatl-bolt it, they could use path, resulting in a free land for us.
I remember perimeter captain being tested but I think it was dropped for curfew since reanimator can be such a bad matchup. I still like the captain though and maybe I'll give it a try.
I'd be really curious to see the numbers on reanimator and whether dedicating 4 board spots to it is actually warranted given the percentage of reanimator decks vs the percentage of zoo decks out there. I'm sure Jeff or Matt has done a bit of work on this. I mean, are we really that terrible pre-board? Do 4 copies of curfew really change our percentages _that_ much? Yes, they have counter-magic but we generally have more, and we just need to protect against the actual reanimation spell being cast.
Maybe it's just my meta, but I don't see very high numbers of reanimator, and I almost always end up facing off against one zoo deck at each tourney I happen to play in.
I personally only side three curfews, but I could see going down to two and maybe taking out the forge tenders for captains. I can't really test until probably august but I don't really know if I'll miss the tenders against ichorid.
For what it is worth:
About Reanimator:
From watching LSV's channel fireball rounds with reanimator, the only games he lost were to tempo based strategies that could reduce his life total quick enough and had enough disruption so that he was forced into topdeck mode.
A good gauge for how well you will do against reanimator game 1 is: what is your goldfish clock like and how much disruption do you have compared to them (4 force, 4 daze, 2 thoughtseize) and by what turn does the disruption become good (for example, counterspell probably becomes good by turn 3 rather than turn 2 against reanimator because of their 4x daze).
I played UWT tonight and went 3-1. I don't feel like actually writing a match report since the decks were not really tier at all.... Apparently it was new casual legacy player night...
Round1. Some legacy version of Sovereign.dec from Type2.
2-0
Round 2. Affinity.(Fun game I wrecked him. took 0 damage from him all match)
2-0
Round 3. Mono Black Aggro
2-0
Round 4.(Top4)Type 2 Vampires.........(He beat me by drawing 4 bolts and 3 blightnings in game 2 and 3.)
1-2
I went (due to some misplays) 3-3 in a local tournament (germany) with 43 participants.
I made some changes a while ago so my decklist looked like this:
// Lands (16)
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
3 [TE] Wasteland
2 [ZEN] Arid Mesa
4 [R] Tundra
1 [ZEN] Island (4)
2 [ZEN] Plains (2)
// Creatures (22)
4 [UL] Mother of Runes
3 [CS] Jotun Grunt
4 [ON] Weathered Wayfarer
4 [TSP] Serra Avenger
2 [WWK] Stoneforge Mystic
3 [DD2] Fathom Seer
2 [MM] Waterfront Bouncer
// Spells (22)
3 [R] Swords to Plowshares
2 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
3 [DS] AEther Vial
4 [MM] Brainstorm
4 [AL] Force of Will
3 [DD2] Daze
3 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
// Sideboard
SB: 4 [LRW] Burrenton Forge-Tender
SB: 1 [SHM] Wheel of Sun and Moon
SB: 2 [10E] Aura of Silence
SB: 1 [LRW] Thorn of Amethyst
SB: 2 [ALA] Ethersworn Canonist
SB: 2 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 3 [MI] Enlightened Tutor
I'll give you a short report of the matches and then explain the maindeck changes in relation to the "standard build".
Match 1 (Steffen) Bant Survival
Game 1 - He began like some sort of Bant aggro and I never saw neither a Survival nor any card which would let me guess of survival action (like Iona, Squee,....). Mom and Waterfront Bouncer (WB) protected me against 2 Tarmo + Monk when Avenger flew over them and killed my opp.
Game 2 - He played T2 Goyf, T3 Survival and I -> O.o Jitte and some WB actions (on Seer/ SFM) won me this game.
1-0-0
Match 2 (Julian) Elf Combo If it is online, you can see this Match on youtube (I'll link it for you)
Game 1 - I don't know what he's playing but after some Elfs + Staff of Domination I knew which deck I had to face. I did some misplays here when I used my Jitte counters. (You'll see them in the video)
Game 2 - I had to mull twice due to bad lands in hand #1 and #2 (first time since I'm playing only 16 lands) endin up with the following 5:
2x Waterfront Bouncer, 2x Wasteland, 1x Flooded Strand. I don't have to say how this game ended...
1-1-0
Match 3 (Marko) Ur Dreadstill
Game 1 - T1 I: Tundra -> Vial. He: Waste-> Tundra
T2 I: counter on Vial, pass, He: Volcanic (eot I vial in Mom)
T3 I: Flooded Strand, fetch -> He stifled it
I never saw another land in this game and was really happy about this so I get creatures. Several Avengers/Grunts won the game
Game 2 - T1 he plays Top, T2 CB, T4 Nought. Short game^^
Game 3 - This was a really hard one. Early he get's another CB+Top but I had the 1st turn Wayfarer and could hold him down on 2 lands. His first Nought get's StPed. Avenger beats him all the time but when he is at 10 I saw the second Nought and lose.
1-2-0
Match 4 (Kim) Aluren
Game 1 - No chance for me.
Game 2 - T1 Mom T2 Canonist saved me this one.
Game 3 - Canonist + Aura + Jitte did it.
2-2-0
Match 5 (Vincent [Teammate]) Bant Control + Else
Game 1 - I mulled to 5 and played like this: Vial -> Mom -> Avenger -> Avenger -> Avenger.
Game 2 - He gets flooded. Nothing else to say.
3-2-0
Match 6 (Simon) Burn with Tuktuk
Game 1 - I knew what he's playing and it was a short game as I suspected.
Game 2 - T1 BFT, T2 BFT + Mom, T3 SFM ftw
Game 2 - I do some misplays not blocking Tuktuk while I got Mom +SFM + Jitte and lose. I really had to win this one.
3-3-0
After all I'm very pleased with my deck and will do no changes. If I would be a better player, I would have been 5-1 at the end of the day^^
Next time I'll do it better.
Now the explanations:
Only 16 lands?
I started playing UW Tempo with 18 Lands ( 4 Wastes, 7 Fetch, 4 Tundra, 2 Plains, 1 Island). After some testings I got to much Lands no matter whether I got Wayfarer or not. I cutted one Arid Mesa and was pleased with it. When I then changed other parts of the maindeck, I had to cut one non-blue card (more about this in the explanation of WB) and decided to try 3 Wastes. Sometimes I whish I would have 4 Wastes but most of the time I need more then 3 copies of it, Grunt helps recycling them.
Only 3 Swords to Plowshares.
Another change due to WB. So you will find the reason of cutting on Sword there^^
Waterfront Bouncer, wtf? O.o
I tested sphinx only a short time and didn't liked it. In my opinion it's to expensive and has an ability we don't need. Fathom Seer and Brainstorm do a really good job if used correctly, so I never missed another card draw/quality engine. And another 2 bodies next to the 22 I'm playing right now is too much.
But there was a problem I had to solve: Too less pitch cards for FoW. So I had to decide either to cut FoW or increase the blue count of the deck. You see I like FoW^^ But seriously we need it to tighten the control part of the deck.
After some brainstorming I decided to expand the deck by Bounce. There are some nice targets in our rows (SFM, Seer, Grunt) and enough on the other side of the table^^ When I recognized that there are only 2 (maybe 3) slots for the whole part "Bounce", I knew I'm searching for a permanent or abolish the plan. I remembered Waterfront Bouncer beeing played in the old UG Madness, tried it and loved it.
As said above, there had to be cutted 2 non blue cards to increase the useability of FoW so I began brainstorming again.
Among other things WB will help fighting creatures so I first cutted a Mom ('cause it's also a permanent solution against creatures) but regret it. Mom is too good to be cutted so I exchanged one StP and to date I never missed it. The other non blue card was the 4th Wasteland, because most the time you use 3 the fourth is nice but not necessary at all.
Only 3 Fathom Seer?
Most of the time I got 2 in hand and never needed both at the same time. Furthermore if you really want 2 Seers in a short time, try using WB ;D
I had to replace it with another blue card and exchanged one copie with the 3rd Spell Pierce which really convinced me.
I have to say that I didn't tested my actual list much against decks playing Wasteland, but in each game they destroyed my lands, I won. There where some games I won with only 1 Land in a whole game (with at least 15 rounds) or some I won with only 1 mana in the whole game (compare Match 3 Game 1 in my tournement report).
Any thoughts about the changes?
The third Pierce, the 16 lands, the Bouncers, only 3 Seers are all stuff that has already been tried and did not work out. Wait for the dogs of this topic to come and explain you why, even if I think you'd better go some pages back and look it by yourself. The only thing I can tell you is: 3 Seers may be good because this deck really loses in the first turns when you open shitty hands full of conditional or delayed creatures (grunt, avenger, seer, sphinx), without having the possibility to find either Aethr Vial or Mother/WW, and this is the reason why I partially left it. Adding Bouncers does not solve the problem, because it's excessively slow and works well only when you're already activating Wayfarer multiple times or have a shitton of cards, i.e. when you should be winning.Quote:
Originally Posted by aajko
We should really find out an on-color creature that is both strong and can be played in the first turns. I've lost too many games with a double dead Seer in hand, or opening with 2 Avengers and practically, giving three turns to an aggro deck or to combo without having the possibility to interfere.
Cutting to 3x StP seems wrong. I often find myself wanting more removal, not less with this deck.
Waterfront bouncer only seems like he'd be good when you have an active wayfarer to let you cash in some of that card advantage.
3x Grunt seems excessive. The only time I'd generally want to see more than one in game is if I'm facing off against dredge or another yard based deck.
I dislike cutting the 4th Fathom Seer for another spell pierce. Were you really finding that 9 counterspells weren't enough?
Therefor you have the possibility to mulligan. Vial+Mother+WW= 11 cards (in most builds) of which you want to have 1 so there is a 40%-chance of drawing exactly one in the opening 7 and another 42% for the first mulligan. I'm not the mathematical specialist but 2 of 5 games you will start with one of the listed 11 buying you time to establish your board. Considering that you do not need to be that fast in each matchup and the fact that you also have the possiblity to delay your opponents clock (FoW, SPierce, Daze, Sword, Waste) I can't see what you want to tell me...Quote:
Originally Posted by Piceli89
I can't comprehend the bolded part. WB costs 2 and has summoning sickness, that's slow, ok (you can use it 1 turn later then Mom or WW). But after that, he will give each of your cards in hand the ability of beeing an Unsommon spell. It works well any time you put it on the board. You don't need to have "shitton of cards" because every card you have can be converted into an Unsommon. One possible use (which helped me often) is to bounce the only creature left on the opponents side to give grunt or jitted [insert random creature] the possibility to deal their damage.Quote:
Originally Posted by Piceli89
I think without trying it, it's not easy to understand how good this card really is (like most of UW Tempos cards^^)
In my opinion, sideboarding or mulliganing will solve this problem. When facing an aggro deck I wouldn't keep double Avenger assumed I have no Vial or can't delay my opp at least 2 turns. The problem of double dead seer is solved in my build I think. As Forbiddian said anywhere in this thread: 3 copies means you want to have it nearly each game but never twice (or something like that^^)Quote:
Originally Posted by Piceli89
@stuckpixel: I think of WB in many ways, also as an pseudo removal. You remove creatures from the battlefield as often as you have U and a card in hand you do not need in this moment.
It's good with many constellation of cards, not only whith an active Wayfarer.
About the 4th Seer: It has not to be the 3rd SPierce but it has to be a blue card (e.g. the 3rd WB^^) and the 4th Seer has to be cutted.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aajko
FYI, I was perhaps the first to suggest Waterfront Bouncer, if you go some pages back as I suggested you to do. I also tested it, and while being ok and sometimes gamebreaking, you really don't want to see it in the first turns, because you're likely to steadily use its ability in the later phases of the game, unless you want to throw away a card per turn to create a pseudo-lock. He does not even work that great given the huge number of aggro-control decks playing weenie-cost critters (all the Zoo ones, Merfolk has vial, Goblins too, Goyf only costs 2, and so). I could agree with it being a good answer maindeck to reanimator fatties (except IWL which is perhaps the most problematic one).
This deck has already some difficulties to block some strong starts from several decks, especially on the draw. WBouncer in these situations is total shit. He works well when you can afford to use its ability conveniently and in a clever way, i.e. making a guy swing through the only enemy blocker-but again, if the opponent has only a (unshrouded ) creature blocking, perhaps you're already winning or he's playing not that great, because WB has to be already on the field to be activated, so your opponent knows about it. The truth about him is that one can really go around it easily, and it's a 1/1 for 2 with a non-hasted ability that creates card disadvantage on the long run, and steal games only when you're already in a very good positin. You should know that this deck wins on generating long-time card advantage and, maybe, recycling late-game dead draws (Sphinx, Brainstorm), and should play the least possible number of conditional cards.
As for the mulliganing bad hands: sometimes you just can't afford to mull so heavily. It really depends on your luck skill. You said we have 11 strong 1-turn drops and this is true, but sometimes it is just not enough, and you can't stick on them alone for, like,3 turns. In my last tournament, I lost like 4 matches because i drew Fathom Seer and I was stuck on 2 lands, and/or having double Avenger which came down too late and had to be used as a blocker to stop a Qasali Pridemage's assault from a Pro Bant going aggro exploiting my poor draws. Also, try to stop Ichorid opening with double Avenger.
This deck is extremely flexible and can win against most of the archetypes, and I recognize it, yet it sometimes opens inconsistent or slow hands.
@ Waterfront Bouncer: There are fleetingly few situations where your opponent wouldn't want pay the CC of their creature to get us to discard a card (let alone when we play a creature to let them do this and we also pay U to activate the ability).
Even like against KotR or another 3 drop (this is where Legacy curves out). You pay 1U to make the bouncer, then you pay U to bounce their guy. So it cost 1UU and two cards and they can just replay it.
Maybe if Dreadnought/Reanimator is really popular in your meta, it'd work out, but still not maindeck material.
I'm not sure about you all, but I really like echoing truth and I am giving it some serious board consideration. Stops storm and belcher when they try to empty the warrens(not like having a force or pierce doesn't do something similar) and it can hose ichorid when they return multiple ichorids to beat or just to get rid of their flood of zombies.
I have another interesting idea which seems kinda bad, but could be useful in some matches. Why not use sunlance? Its another piece of removal against most of goblins/merfolks early plays and actually is good against a lot of the annoying creatures in zoo. It doesn't kill QPM, Teeg, Loam Lion, but most of the time when I've played against zoo it wouldn't have been bad to sunlance a couple of kird apes/nacatls in addition to smaller goyfs and saving stp for some of the other threats.
When would you want to play sunlance over condemn?
Echoing truth isn't nearly as useful as it seems to be. I'd rather run something that's more concrete of an answer than bounce most of the time. Curfew being the exception in a reanimator-heavy meta.