You plan to win without creatures?Originally Posted by DCTopTeam
Ok, i'll be trying the following: -1 island, -1 stifle +2 kira and see how that works
Also i will test the spell pierces: -2 kira, -1 daze and see how that works.
~Maarten
CREATURES (20)
4 Cursecatcher
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Merfolk Sovereign
4 Merrow Reejeerey
4 Silvergill Adept
SPELLS (19)
4 Ęther Vial
3 Boomerang
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
3 Standstill
2 Stifle
LANDS (21)
4 Mutavault
13 Island
4 Wasteland
SIDEBOARD (15)
2 Blue Elemental Blast
2 Hydroblast
3 Mind Harness
2 Misdirection
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Stifle
2 Tormod's Crypt
This is my current build. Right now, I am either playing this or ANT as I have abandoned Goblins.
As previously mentioned, Boomerang has been really good for me. Better than Echoing Truth. I did up my Island count by one and I still only run three Boomerang but I have considered a fourth. Saving a Mutavault from a Wasteland is just one perk it has over Echoing Truth.
I don't expect everyone to agree with my choices, which is fine, but I still wanted to share just so people can debate/discuss.
My apologies to Phoenix if you covered some of these same points already.
A not dead card.
Zoo does not have to burn every creature. He only burns the guy you equip. If you attack, you have now walked into a superior creature w/out a Jitte. If you stay to block with it, he can zap it eot. He can now roll right over your 2/2 or 3/3 that remains to block.
Merfolk is not helpless here. I have managed to survive to the point of having four mana and a Jitte. Naturally that is what you want. I think we can all see that. I am sure that I was able to play, equip, and attack in the same turn. I may have even gotten through. It may have even won me the game at some point. But the vast majority of the time I found that I could not connect. Jitte is perfectly awful against Zoo, man. You can't have possibly tested this and come to a different conclusion. It is just that bad.
My gameplan is to not have dead cards. Merfolk pounds Landstill, so I don't care about that so much. But against Rock and Stax, and such, Jitte could have been a threat.Fair enough, but again, what's your gameplan against The Rock and Landstill? It seems like they can kill everything you own and then mass removal everything. Jitte or not, you'd lose, so I don't know why you're blaming Jitte for being a bad card in a "They can destroy everything we have"-type situation.
I don't know if you have ever been on the control end of this scenario. But Landstill and Rock love to see a Jitte hit the table. It is usually a non-factor. Even if you get a hit or two in, the life gain and -1 counters are next to useless as both of these decks are very unlikely to get rid of it with creatures or try to race you.
This is what I am currently using for anti-red which have served me well enough - better than Jitte in any of those spots anyway. It is in the OP.
4 Blue Elemental Blast
3 Chill
3 Misdirection
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
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I also ran Jitte for a while, and came to the same conclusions Finn and co have. In fact, I'm pretty sure I ranted on it somewhere. My own "anti-zoo/red" package contains:
4x StP
4x Path to Exile
3x Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
4x Blue Elemental Blast
And what do you know, Zoo ain't so hard anymore.
Finn, what do you think about Spell Pierce in the sideboard to both combat Red (doubt they'll ever play it) as well as landstill/stax/combo.
Seems to me like a very versatile card against all of our bad matchups (and even some good ones I guess, just not good against other tribes).
I'm also on board with Spell Pierce. I'm running 3-4 in my mono-blue sideboard. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, Spell Pierce is the best thing to happen to blue sideboards since Blue Elemental Blast/Hydroblast.
That said, I'm not entirely sure Pierce helps in the Zoo matchup, as it does nothing to stave off their actual threats.
To get Mono Blue -good- against Zoo, I've needed both Blast and Misdirection and often a third factor, be it Kira, Jitte, or Chill. With all this considered, I'm starting to wonder if it might not be feasible to just abandon the Zoo matchup and focus on solidifying every other match in existence. This has worked well for me in the past with Goblins against TES - Abandon the matchup, pray you don't run across it, and if you do win the rest.
The problem with this logic is that:
A) TES isn't a popular deck, numbers-wise. and
B) Zoo is.
True, zoo is very popular right now. It would be rare to go to a significant tournament and not get paired against it at least once. Thing about ignoring zoo and focusing on other matches is then people will play mroe zoo cause it is even more favorable. If you don't want a deck to be present you can try just bording massive hate for it until people stop playing it.
People are discussing jitte for particularly the zoo matchup. I wonder about its merits in other matchups as well?
Mainly, I'm thinking merfolk. It could be okay against goblins, maybe worth boarding in but not an all star type of card. It could also deal with lots of random aggro decks that don't run red (survival, elves, who knows whart you will run into). Is there a better tool for the mirror? And I know there is the Cephalid chick, but she is very narrow, and jitte at least has some other uses. But is jittes "other uses" (debateable as we can see on this thread) not worth it really in comparison to a hater merfolk card?
I say all this because if I'm playing this deck, I want a tool for the mirror, because the last big tournament I went to there were ten thousand merfolk decks.
More people won't start playing Zoo just because one Merfolk player decides to give up on the matchup. If everyone does that the metagame will shift (or because this is Legacy I suppose I should say might), but when preparing for a tournament your only concern is the metagame at that tournament, and if it turns out afterwards that all the Merfolk players did the same thing as you and the metagame shifts for the next tournament, then you adjust accordingly and choose a different strategy for the next tournament.
SummenSaugen: well, I use Chaos Orb, Animate Artifact, and Dance of Many to make the table we're playing on my chaos orb token
SummenSaugen: then I flip it over and crush my opponent
This is mostly directed at Nightmare and Finn, but ive been having trouble figuring out what to board out in the Zoo matchup. For example with Nightmares list, hes boarding in 15 cards, and all i can think to drop is standstill and maybe stifle as well as daze on the draw. What have you been taking out in the matchup?
Yeah, I didn't say Jitte is good against Zoo. In fact, I even said it was "not great" against Zoo. It was a bit confusing, because I tried to defend Jitte against your hypothetical situation (you said something to the effect of: "Oh, Zoo just burns everything you have all the time, so Jitte is dead..."). I thought that was an unfair comparison. But I wasn't at all saying that I thought Jitte was outstanding against Zoo, I just thought it was far more useful than you implied.
I do think Jitte is outstanding in the mirror. It's really hard to lose with Jitte in the mirror matchup, unless your opponent has like two LoAs and you don't draw any or something.
It's also very good against Goblins, and a huge host of other decks it's the one card you want to see.
When 70% of your sideboard is devoted to defeating red, you can do it, too!
I mean, I don't really understand this. You're comparing Jitte, a maindeck contender or a board card with a huge number of applicable matchups (including random aggro, every tribal deck, Ichorid, Burn, and then on top of that, it has at least marginal use in almost every matchup) to Chill, which has an unbelievably narrow application: Burn, Zoo, and Goblins, and then saying, "Against Zoo, I prefer Chill to Jitte."
I think maybe this is just a misunderstanding about what I was saying and then a bunch of randos jumping on an out-of-context quotation.
I'm not saying that Jitte is great against Zoo. Most of the time, it only trades with Qasali. I'm saying it's not dead against Zoo, and that comparisons like, "Oh, what if he burns all of your creatures" aren't valid criticisms, because those would apply to every card.
I am saying that Jitte is a good card, but mainly for its other matchups, including Goblins, which is what I originally suggested it to combat.
So is Jitte without a crit (because of assumed removal from Zoo) better than E. Truth or any card not named Jitte? I don't think so. I own three Jitte's. Been there testing and done that. Rather have a Trasher, Snare or other else in the main.
As far as your options for the mirror match, you have the humorous things like Llawan, Cephalid Empress, Seasinger, and Merfolk Assassin... But I wouldn't run these unless your meta is just completely overrun with Merfolk. Like, to the point where you should just switch and play Goblins. The only reason I suggest those is if you're one of those people with a fetish for "secret tech" type of sideboard optioins.
Assuming you have a more normal meta, I'd run Jitte or Threads of Disloyalty. Honestly, Threads is probably your best option, since it's better against Zoo, and Zoo is kind of like the metagame prom queen right now and everything...
Bless your heart, we must consider Blue/White Tempo's strategy and win percentages in an entirely different deck thread. -4eak
I don't run Stifle at all. So, there are three StP's in the MD already - I board 12 cards. Generally, it's 4 Standstill, 4 Aether Vial, 2 Sovereigns, and 2 Daze.
If you play at a local tournament with the same players each week and completely ignore zoo, people will definitely play it more. I have seen decks get forced out of local meta by people hating on it each week with the specific goal of forcing the deck out.
@Phoenix, I have not tried Spell Pierce, but it seems good against Landstill, Stax, Rock, and combo. It is commonly hard to decipher Zoo versus similar decks with much more burn, and so I am not sure if I like it there. I mean, it seems good, but it could be bad if you guess your opponent to have 20 burn and removal spells, and he has 8 or 10. I don't do a lot of sb'ing against those other opponents, so the questions revolve around it being better than similar cards that hit those matchups. I think I might try it in the Chill spot though. I would give ground to some aggro, but get a much broader sb option.
@Jeff, yeah Nightmare isn't messing around. He intends to beat Zoo period. I am still behind the Stifle and Wasteland plan. I am even seeing reason to consider Rishadan Ports again with the new manabases. I have been taking out stuff like...
-2 Cursecatcher
-2 Force of Will
-1 Island
-4 Standstill
-2 Echoing Truth
+1 Stifle
+3 Chill
+3 Misdirection
+4 Blue Blast
...or some variation of that. Phoenix says he races Zoo. I don't really. I have been using Misdirection as removal, and doing things like talking about Propaganda (which I don't have) to convince him to keep slow Pridemages in just for Chill. It's an imperfect solution, but I think everything is.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
While racing zoo sounds ridiculous, as they can goldfish a turn 3, it is surprisingly easier if you can destroy their manabase.
Stifle/Waste can keep their Nacatls and possible Kird Apes low, can shut off their ability to play multicolored spells like Pridemage early, and can even keep them off playing more than one card a turn. Daze is much more relevant and Firespout is virtually uncastable.
I'm not saying this is easy at all or in our favor, but this is the best I've done without completely overhauling the deck to add white.
Ok so they way im seeing it, beating Zoo is divided between trying to race them (which i dont see as practical), boarding a ton of removal and Kira, or taking a more control roll with Chill, Propaganda and Blasts.
So i guess the discussion goes to which of those boarding plans is best against non-zoo decks?
Also, @Nightmare, do you take out vials vs zoo to blank pridemage and grip? Cause it seems good for getting a surprise lord in to protect the team.
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