This is exactly the problem. CA is now more than ever the way to beat miracles.Originally Posted by MrIggins
We didn't care about balance in the first place, terminus was always the problem.
Most of my stuff did care about Counterbalance because I go wide with a low curve.
CA is an axis I'm happy to fight on.
Sounds like a job for Bob and haste creatures.
Yeah I knew how you feltyou would like my current list as well, I'll post it someday
You're on a different build than I was thinking then, and that could be the way we need to battle them in that case!
4 Veteran Explorer
1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Fierce Empath
2 Eternal Witness
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Grave Titan
1 Inferno Titan
1 Woodland Bellower
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Diabolic Intent
3 Punishing Fire
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Kolaghan's Command
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Sneak Attack
2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
1 Dryad Arbor
3 Bayou
1 Badlands
1 Taiga
3 Grove of the Burnwillows
1 Phyrexian Tower
3 Forest
2 Mountain
2 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills
sb::
2 Blood Moon
2 Thoughtseize
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Lost Legacy
1 Nissa, Vital Force
2 Pyroblast
2 Painful Truths
2 Carpet of Flowers
Here's where I'm at.
Rationale time (this is going to be long and theory-laden):
Facts:
-) Sneak Attack (card + strategy as a whole) is effective against combo decks, which we traditionally struggle against. It's also good vs the BUG decks, but those have dried up.
-) Sneak Attack (card + strategy as a whole) is bad against Delver (they can break it up too easily/are too fast, esp Grixis with Therapy) -and- vs Stoneblade of either variety (too many permanents in play, too resilient).
-) Sneak Attack (strategy as a whole, but not necessarily card) is effective against a wide range of random nonsense that legacy is known capable to produce. It's also effective against neo-Miracles once resolved.
-) Lack of incremental advantage is a huge problem in a Topless world for Nic Fit. We need to aggressively be looking for x-for-1s. One of the best sources of these advantages is planeswalkers. Kommand has been huge for this, but we need more.
-) Jace is still a problem. Always.
-) Multiple Sneaks is a big problem -- you need to see enough of them to resolve one, but also you rarely want to draw multiples and never a backup once one has resolved. It's a literal brick.
-) Multiple Intents causes a similar problem to that which we discovered when we went heavy down the Rhino train a year or two ago -- it forces us to run too many creatures, and 85% of creatures in MtG are bad. I kept junking up lists with garbage like Huntmaster or cards which, while good, are not really relevant for Sneak, like Thragtusk or multiple Trackers.
-) Punishing Fire doesn't kill everything. It's awful against Gurmag, and it's uncastable against True-Name, but it allows us to focus our other removal spells on keeping those cards under control.
Let's go down the list.
Core:
Sneak has a 21-card core, consisting of:
4 Vet
1 Empath
1 Bellower
1 Emrakul
4 Therapy
4 Zenith
3 Sneak
3 Deed
Beyond this, there are several cards which I personally consider core -- Eternal Witness, Steve, and so on, but which are not intrinsically required for Sneak to function as a deck. I believe they represent some of the best options we have for those slots, but, season to taste.
Ooze has performed extremely well for me -- he helps blank opposing Deathrites or Snapcasters in the midgame, holding down opponents' card advantage (hitting their 2-for-1s is essentially the same as us achieving a 2-for-1 ourselves). He's a second, bulky target for Bellower, he's an effective maindeck hate card in some scenarios, though certainly not as many as you'd wish him to be, and he's the second-best green 2-drop for us, I believe (I firmly endorse Steve for #1, ESPECIALLY with Blood Moons in the sideboard).
2nd Witness (we'll lump the Kommands in here as well) helps form a recursive core that generates us a lot of card advantage, especially when recurring other x-for-1s. Kommand has been absolutely asininely good for me -- it's one of the best cards you could ever dream of against Esper/Bant Blade decks, still good vs Delver, and works internally for advantage within our own deck if the matchup for it is poor. Plus, it has advantages like being insane against fringe decks like MUD. I can't honestly brag about them enough.
Tracker -- one is fine, more than that is bad. Good Zenith target, good Bellower target, honestly best when naturally drawn and not tutored for. I've tried numbers at this point anywhere from 0 to a full set, and 1 just feels the best. I think that the 2nd Tracker is realistically somewhere around the 63rd or 64th card. It's good, it's something we'd want given the choice, but it's not good enough to be pushed into the deck.
Grave and Inferno Titans: I'm on board with Grave, I'm still a little questionable on Inferno but he's undeniably powerful in certain scenarios. If we ever get another hyper-pushed 6-drop that's worth considering in Jund, ideally something that generates a lot of advantage as an enters trigger, Inferno will be the first to get dropped. Regardless, I do think that he's next in line behind Bellower and Grave.
Deluge is here because of the maindeck Intent, basically. If I was off Intent, I would be off Deluge as well (or, possibly, I would be on 2 Intents). Deluge has, however, been quite good. There's a lot of dorks and True-Names floating around, and having a faster way of killing them than Deed, especially with Stifle running around, is very important.
As for Intent, as I said, I don't think that we can really get away with more than one copy, as least for now. It's possible that if we get more pushed creatures in the future, especially lower cmc ones, that a second copy might be good. Right now, though, there just aren't enough high-quality creatures in jund nic fit to justify the second copy. The first is, however, undeniably good and pushes us to 6 sac outlets for Vets, which is a little lower than I'd like but is the best I can realistically accomplish at the moment. I will freely admit that when we were on 8 sac outlets (4 Therapy, 2 Tower, 2 Intent), the deck's mana generation felt AMAZINGLY smooth, and that is a concept that I will definitely be keeping in mind for other builds....mostly junk or BUG, which have the extra bodies to accomodate extra Intents.
Punishing Fire makes its triumphant return. Dalton's posts made me think about Punishing Fire again, so, props to him for that. PFire is still good vs Jace and other planeswalkers. It's still good at picking off Deathrites, Delvers, Pyromancers, Stoneforges, Containment Priests, Snapcasters, and Cliques. It does fail a couple of huge checks in the meta -- it's awful vs Leovold, it's awful vs Gurmag, it's unplayable (literally) vs True-Name, and obviously Goyf just laughs at it. But, as I said above, freeing up our other removal spells to be able to handle those threats is honestly worth it. I'd rather have a Deed or a Deluge for a TNN than be forced to use it on a board of Delver / DRS that PFire can clean up for me. It is, also, a source of card advantage -- a single Punishing Fire + Grove can frequently clean up 2-3 cards, at least, although it can be answered somewhat easily since we are not a dedicated PFire/Grove deck (only 3 copies of each, and no Loam/Knight of the Reliquary/etc).
Miser's Decay helps pick off errant early threats, but flexes to be able to handle equipment, Chalices, Leovolds, etc. I had two copies originally and had stayed at 2 for a long time, but in the end I needed one space and I felt the 2nd Decay was the weakest card in the deck, so it got the axe. I wouldn't fault anyone for running the pair.
Chandra is our Jace. I'm dead serious. Sam can attest that I was extremely uneasy about this card, because I'm seeing nightmare scenarios of flipping Emrakul to exile and breaking up Sneak chains. I tested a PFire list without Sneaks a couple days ago, and while that deck was questionable, Chandra overperformed to a ridiculous degree. She beats Jace TMS 1-on-1. Her plus generates a card while dealing 2 damage to Jace (redirect), which forces Jaces into the unenviable position of being forced to +2 to stay alive -- and +2 is bad vs us in that scenario because we're drawing two a turn. She's amazing against Liliana, as well, for much of the same reasons. Her -3 isn't enough to kill Gurmag, which is very unfortunate, but she can protect herself reasonably well, and the amount of removal we currently run, especially with PFire, is enough to generally run interference for her. Plus, her ultimate is game-ending, and comes online much quicker than Jace's (again, while keeping him unable to progress). I've also added 2 mana with her more times than I can really recall conveniently, usually to pump up a Zenith or Deed activation, but sometimes to be able to hardcast a Titan, break clues, or have mana floating against Pierce/Daze. Really, really good card for us and I would be tempted to run a 3rd if I thought we had room. I haven't flipped Emrakul yet, but if we're in a position to where we can safely +1 Chandra and keep her safe, we can easily just ride her to victory instead of Emrakul -- which is better against half the decks anyway.
The manabase is essentially what I was running before, except for one fewer Phyrexian Tower to help make way for the Groves. 23 lands including Dryad Arbor feels right -- every once in a while we'll flood out, which is unfortunate, but there's nothing we can really do to prevent it. I was on 22 including Arbor for a while and I ended up getting mana screwed and having to mulligan a lot -- it's amazing the difference that one extra land makes, really. I am still on 61 cards. I did test at 60 for quite a while, and I do think there is merit to 22 lands (again, including Arbor) with 60 cards. The 3rd Bayou is my "61st," and while I do think it is possibly fine at 22/60, I still felt like I was mulliganning more than I liked. I'll probably conduct more extensive tests of 22/60 or 23/61 in the future, but for now, I was much more worried about getting the rest of the deck hammered out.
The sideboard is arguably the most important part of the deck.
I don't think it's perfect yet, but, what I've been doing is thus:
vs Delver / Blade, I go AT LEAST:
-3 Sneak
-1 Emrakul
+2 Pyroblast
+1 Nissa
+ ???
There's other boarding considerations for each, of course, but the moral of the story is that I am boarding out Sneaks and Emrkaul in these matchups, and "turning into" straight PFire Jund. This has been very effective for me at managing the Delver and Blade decks that had been hounding me. I kept being like, these are good matchups, why am I losing? I think the answer to that was that Sneak Attack is, flatly, bad in those matchups, and having the ability to transform out of it for them out of the sideboard is excellent.
Also, Moon is amazing. Feels reeeeeal good to board in in some matchups.
I'm not convinced that the card selections are correct across the board...especially the 2 Painful Truths and the combo hate suite, but that's where I'm starting at and we'll work from there.
Anyway, this has been feeling pretty good and I'm confidant that even if it's not 100% perfect, it's damn close. I do feel like we could be the benefit of some good printings, but I don't feel hideously underpowered now, at least, like I had been for a while.
Like I said, I haven't played against the new Miracles yet, I'm a paper player only, and just the local scene at that. It won't be until September that I can play a bunch of Legacy again when college is back in session.
However, when SDT was around, I did have a very positive matchup against Miracles going 6-2-2 against them over the past year. That could have been due to the pilots or it could be due to my builds but they never scared me. The only games I would ever lose were to a CB lock. The trick to beating them in the past was always card advantage. If you can draw two cards to every one they draw then it doesn't matter if they get the occasional 2 for 1 with Terminus, or stop a card with CB. Something would get through. I assume it's the same here. With a high card velocity they can't counter everything or gain as much tempo for each creature they deal with.
How about card quality rather than advantage..? Seriously, Mirri's Guile is a pretty damn good replacement for Top that still allows us to have pretty much the best library manipulation/card selection of the format, with all the shuffle effects that we run.
Dude, Mirri's Guile. Select & shuffle. You don't need to have more cards than your opponent, you just have to consistently find the right ones. Your gameplan is that powerful. Having multiple Intents actually makes this card better.
As for multiple Intents (and hence a way to improve consistency of your combo) - you just might have to reconfigure your base skeleton. And opt for an easy backup/stalling plan that gives you plenty of time to both find your combo pieces and create that hole in your opponents' defenses. If you want to function as a combo deck, you'll have to play as one.
Chandra only deals damage with her +1 if you don't cast the card.
Sure, but you're still functionally drawing it because you are offered the choice of whay to do with it. Having the decision at all is good enough, there.
2-3 in league
1-2 grixis control
felt not close
2-1 RUG delver
EZ mode
2-0 4c deathblade
EZ mode
1-2 Elves
felt not close
1-2 Burn
bad variance :(
gonna make changes and go from there.
MTGO: Ricardio
Nic Fit: legacy's magical EDH deck
I came here to party and resolve prime time triggers.
"Well, I ain't calling you a truther." -Josh
IMGUR:http://ricardio69.imgur.com/all/
Grixis and Burn should be doable w/ Junk Fit.
What was your 75?
It still constrains you to 1 card/turn so if you want that card to be bigger, it runs into the usual ramp problems where it's not always a high quality card. That's another reason decks like Delver keep their curve low. With low mana generation quality needs to be cheap, they can't play 4 cards in a turn usually.
Neither can we, but we get away with playing only 1/2 cards a turn every turn b/c our spells are simply stronger than our opponents'. Even if we need to take some beats in the early game to get there. That's why we run Rhinos. Other decks' relative card quality diminishes as the games drag on, ours keeps increasing. Wasteland, Stifle and Daze are wonderful during turns 1 through 3 (roughly), but become much worse once your past turn 5 and up. Especially once we hit our stride. Same goes for, say, Lightning Bolt. It's capable of dealing with DRS or whatever, but useless vs. Rhinos and other stuff (unless they want to start 2-for-1'ing themselves, which is still very good for us).
With 1 mana library manipulation back to smoothen out our draws it should work out just fine. Heck, one can argue that Guile is better in some cases b/c it doesn't need any mana investments after you drop it on the field.
spoiler from Hours of Devestation:
Ramunap Excavator
2G
Creature - Naga Cleric
You may play land cards from your graveyard.
"This world was once so much more than the confines of Naktamun."
illus. # 129/184
C&D
2/3
Another utility 3-drop, but has some serious usefulness. Makes Crop/KotR/Loam of whatever shenanigans more interesting.
so basically a Zenithable Crucible of Worlds.
Kagu-Tsuchi カグツチ (Jund NicFit)
Rhino's Abbondanza (Junk NicFit)
4c Aggro Loam
I play a bunch of cards every turn.
Maybe, but my counter argument is that I'm not sure it's even needed. Remember, before the SDT ban I was already cutting Tops, I was running only two and about to drop to just a singleton copy.With 1 mana library manipulation back to smoothen out our draws it should work out just fine. Heck, one can argue that Guile is better in some cases b/c it doesn't need any mana investments after you drop it on the field.
I like this one. I'll slot it over Courser of Kruphix most likely. It might be enough to make me rethink the Horizon Canopy plan, but I also really like what this does with Crop Rotation.
Glad I've put Maverick together too, this makes their Wasteland strategy super dangerous.
PS: Dryad Arbor tricks.
Holy crap. It's a GSZ'able Crucible. My 4 Tracker 4 Smokestack deck just got quite a bit better. If only it were human so that I could run Caverns + Braids...
Makes the Gitrog Monster a lot better.
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Other decks can probably use it better. Stuff that runs Mox Diamond, Exploration, Life from the Loam and Wastelands and Ghost Quarters. I mean, holy fucking shit. Only reason why it probably won't work though is b/c it's a creature that dies to everything. On the other hand, Volrath's Stronghold is also a land so who knows.
On a fun note, especially combined w/ Exploration, it can ramp you quite a ways using Crystal Vein. And sets up a fun little engine when combined w/ Tireless Tracker.
Also, combine w/ Courser of Kruphix and a fetchland for some library manipulation. Or combine with Mirri's Guile and a fetchland to let yourself look @3 fresh cards every single turn. That's a lot of card selection. Top would have been even better with this.
Depends on the type of card. Interaction, sure. Creatures, probably just 1/turn, as big as possible.
I get your point on the necessity of it. I think it is.
Overload their removal and dying to removal ceases to matter.
I'll definitely be playing with this card a bit. I love the interaction between it and Tracker. As TTX pointed out, I might even try Gitrog.
In Junk, if you forego some Trackers I could see Horizon Canopy playing well.
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