Primeval Titan, Thrun, Spiritmonger, Fierce Empath...etc., at least one of these green guys should be run for lategame GSZ's. (Except Thrun does suck vs. a goyf/KoTR (unless you want to stall), but otherwise he's pretty cool.)Originally Posted by hyperchord24
Don't forget about Mystic Enforcer.
Tom? Is that you? I thought you were going to go work on DnD?
In GB versions I have had success using Dungrove Elder as a pseudo KotR. Playing 4 Elders definitely justifies 4 GSZ because having access to 8 Hexproof growing beaters allows us to punch through a lot of things.
On unrelated news, I intend to participate in a large tournament Saturday and I have no idea what to expect. Any insight on my sideboard would be apreciated. Here is my list:
Creatures (13)
3 Veteran Explorer
1 Birds of Paradise
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Kitchen Finks
2 Eternal Witness
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Deranged Hermit
2 Grave Titan
Instant/Sorcery (15)
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Green Sun's Zenith
3 Vindicate
Artifact/Enchantment (6)
3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Pernicious Deed
Planeswalkers (4)
2 Liliana of the Veil
1 Garruk Relentless
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
Lands (22)
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Phyrexian Tower
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath
2 Bayou
2 Savannah
1 Scrubland
3 Forest
3 Swamp
1 Plains
Sideboard (15)
2 Extirpate
3 Diabolic Edict
3 Enlightened Tutor
1 Circle of Protection: Red
1 Stony Silence
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Kitchen Finks
Do you know what assuming does? It makes an ass out of you and me.
Get it...? Ass, u, me?
... ffs I was trying to be funny...
Thrun is probably your best bet for GSZ, unfortunately, he is still not that huge. If you are still looking for a beef cake that you can drop does not die to random removal I would suggest plated slagwurm. but as it has been stated previously in the thread 7 mana, 8 if you are zenithing for him is a lot of mana and you are not always going to find that much even late game.
Maybe natural order is not a terrible idea, unfortunately eating 5 slots in an already tight decklist is tough. -2 grave titan, -1 deranged hermit, -1 liliana, ( i run 3), and -1 hymn. +4 NO, +1 Prog? I have not tired this out, but hitting 4 mana is way easier then 6.
On a side note what do you see as the optimal early games plays. From my experience vs anything but combo it is T1 explorer, T2 attack, therapy, flash back therapy, hymn, which is what makes this deck so good.
By the time Dungrove Elder is relevant you could just as easily GSZ for a six drop.
If you're thinking about Plated Slagwurm, there's also Gaea's Revenge and Kalonian Behemoth. Not to mention the sligtly smaller Gigapede and Kodama of the North Tree
When you are building this deck, ask yourself the following question: Do you want to play your pet cards, or do you want to win?
All of these cards are pretty terrible outside of Gigapede, and that's only for a very certain scenario: if a repeatable 6/1 can grind them out. And Thrun is going to be better in most of those situations at that. Primeval Titan + personlands/ maybe Wolf Run seems better in a majority of normal scenarios.
Edit: Also- What Malakai said.
Those weren't pet cards. Someone suggested they needed something to put them over the top. Presumably Grave Titan and Thrun are already on that person's list. What else is there? White has Eternal Dragon. Black has the aforementioned Titan or hell, even Helldozer. Blue has morphling. What does green have? P Titan can be countered and targeted, plus needs extra non basic lands shoe-horned in to make him work.
Hi guys. I'm new with Nic Fit, but i'm testing it the last two weeks in hard mode.
1st at all: why no one list run no one Tarmogoyf? What's happening with our 4/5 1g?? I've past like 60% my games thinking like this: "Omg, if this Wild hunt was a goyf, this game was mine; Omg, if i've have some goyfs, this GSZ could bring the win." etc.
2nd: This is a GSZ deck with W. Why not KotR? then 23 lands with Canopy and 1-off Wasteland, for exemple (or Karakas, or Maze of ith).
3rd: In few victorys, i feel like: "im lucky with this 1-off winner Recurring Nightmare" or same for Grave titan. This lucky feeling happens with all of you?
Am I playing wrong?
Any tip is welcome.
the way i play it this is a bomb deck, what other reason is there to ramp with veteran explorer?
i want to drop a planeswalker turn 2, and a a titan turn 3 and win, just bombs that do something the turn they come to play.
tarmogoyf doesnt do anything by itself, same for Knight of the Reliquary that take so long to setup and dont do anything when they come to play. with 4 mana (GSZ + KotR) i just rather eternal witness grabbing my swords to plowshares back for example.
as for the pet cards discussion, i've been running a single gigapede instead of deranged hermit and it has been nuts. but i also play 4 walkers and 3 titans, the gigapede for is just so i can do something with 6 mana and a GSZ in hand.
I believe that the answer to the "what do you do with GSZ" question is Fierce Empath. I'll grant that it isn't necessarily KotR-levels of insanity, but Empath -> arbitrary 6-drop is a line of play that doesn't get enough recognition. If I'm not answering somebody's threat, I'm usually going for Empath as my go-to guy to build board presence and take over the game.
I'll be heading up to Jupiter's NELC tomorrow morning with a revised list. Considering that we're actually noteworthy enough to be in the DTB forum, I don't think that posting my list the night before is a good idea, but you can expect a report from me when I return. I will say right now that I have cut down to 2 GSZ and added a few more white creatures, since that's the debate that's currently raging. I also have some savage sideboard technology which I can't wait to spring on somebody.
///
@reev_:
1: Goyf isn't good in this deck. It's a board-control archetype, and Goyf falls right smack in the middle of Deed firing range -- to say nothing of versions that run Rector->Moat. Additionally, you'll almost always be on the losing side of a Goyf war with this deck. Their Goyfs will either be bigger from exalted or will be backed up by burn. Even beyond that, it gives a solid spell-snare target, which many versions are lacking otherwise at the moment. (Wish and Hymn being the outstanding exceptions).
2: KotR is something I've thought long and hard about, as it's one of my favorite cards. I'm not sure that this is really the archetype for him, for some of the same reasons as with Senor Goyf. However, I would be much more likely to run Knight than Goyf, due to its higher mana cost and tutoring/backup ramping ability. A few solid utility lands can really provide another avenue of attack for the deck, as it opens up manlands without needing Primeval Titan, Maze of Ith, Karakas, etc. I would say that the problem is space, but you built the list form the ground up you would either end up with something interesting, or a bastardized version of Maverick. Not sure which.
3: Yes. At the same time, try not to think of it as luck. Think of it as inevitability. If you happen to find your inevitability sooner rather than later, so much the better. But the singleton Nightmare, especially, isn't really to break the early-game, although it's certainly capable of it. It's there to do broken shit late game, at the point at which your opponent is out of gas. Then it just completely takes over. A lot of people don't like things like the miser's Nightmare, but I find it always reassuring to know that it's in my deck somewhere, waiting to annoy the hell out of my opponent. I have Rectors to grab it earlier if I need it, but also don't underestimate the amount of dig that the deck has. It can empty itself of lands very, very quickly if left unabated, and with Tops/Arenas/Skeletal it can draw/filter a ton of cards.
@Malakai and others: danger of cute things is public enemy number one with this deck. The nature of the explorer engine enables all kinds of stupidity, and allows people to feel like they can do anything. The trick is balancing Johnny and Spike. I'm not going to say that I do a very good job of this personally, although I will continue to defend things like Recurring Nightmare and Sun Titan as sitting astride the "too cute line" -- on the "spikey" side. Sun Titan especially CAN feel like win-more, but it can also get you out of some really, really hairy situations. And to the comment earlier (whoever posted it) that Sun Titan + Deed is win-more because you're already favored against aggro decks, I feel there's a difference between "win-more" and "win-enough/win-now". Titan demands an answer by aggro decks. If they can't present one immediately, they die. They don't have time to dig out, to find answers or to stabilize (or draw the fatal burn spell ala zoo). They just die. The ability to actually kill someone isn't win-more to me.
@Everyone suggesting Primeval + Manlands: have you guys played with basics so much now that you forget that Wasteland is a card, and one that isn't particularly effective against this deck in the first place? Why do you want to make yourselves more vulnerable to it? I feel like if you want manlands, you're going to need at least a singleton Loam somewhere, which is going to fundamentally shift the deck in a multitude of ways. Not necessarily terrible, but you can't just shoehorn a Primeval and a few manlands in and call it a day. That addition will require a rebuild from the ground up, IMO.
@Moseby: Slagwurm is wayyyyy too expensive for wayyyy too little. As far as optimal plays go, I think that the god-hand sequence is probably something like Land->Therapy, Explorer->flashback, Explorer->Tower->sac, some arbitrarily stupid 5-drop or under, then turn 3 6-drop. Depends on the matchup and the individual list, though.
@Qweerios: Do you have any idea of the meta at all? Surgical feels better than Extirpate to me if there's going to be combo or dredge running around, since it gives you a way to interact before even laying a land (Dredge esp. comes to mind here). The second Finks feels a little soft to me in the current meta-meta, but again, it might be right for where you're heading, hard to say. Your ET package looks solid, although I think I'd try to squeeze in a little more blue/combo hate...Choke, Chains, Eyes of the Wisent, or something similar. I think that if you absolutely HAD to open up two spots for some different hate, I would drop the Finks and the Nihil Bomb. I would probably suggest Bomb/Extirpates-> 3x Surgical and Finks -> blue hate. Maybe Cold-Eyed Selkie? It's been doing pretty good work for me.
Ty for reply Arianrhod. Can't wait to see your report tomorrow.
Good lucky.
If you have enough mana to GSZ for a six drop, what green six drop is better than a 6/6 (if at some point you fetched a basic swamp) or 7/7 (if you didn't) creature with hexproof?
Not to mention you only have to spend 3-4 mana on him, which means you wouldn't have to tap out and could do other things.
It's not just about "what card is better." You have to consider all scenarios, rather than try living in magical christmas land. Knight of the Reliquary is a dominant card no matter when you cast them. Having an active KotR in play feels very much like having an active Dark Confidant in play. Dungrove Elder does stone nothing until you've manage to get a ridiculous amount of forests into play.
I'm not even saying KotR is the answer, and I think Dungrove Elder was worth looking at. The proper choice could very well be four-drops or what have you. What I am saying is that if you are already doing inherently more powerful things than your opponent, then what you want is consistency over just about anything else.
Okay! I notice some lists are not running Tarmogoyf, which I actually approve of but I want to hear opinions on this:
Is there any reason, apart form money, that you would NOT run goyf? Explain the advantage of excluding him from your list please.
Also... Dark Confidant?
"Rulers wear crowns while the rest of us wear hats, but which would you rather have when it's raining?" -Back to Basics flavor text
Why Goyf sucks?
-Small
-Spell Snare
-Pernicious Deed
Follow me on Twitter @RaNDoMxGeSTuReS
already been explained throughout the thread and even on this very page.
dark confidant is awsome but (for example in my list) with 3 6cc drops, 1 5cc drop and 6 4cc drops it just doesnt work. some people run phyrexian arena ive never tried it but it can be fetched with academy rector i guess, cant say if it works or not because i havent tried it.
tarmogoyf apart from every other reason (small, doesnt do anything by itself, can be spell pierced, provides no control) is it really worth paying 3 (GSZ + goyf) or even 4 (wish + goyf for those who run wish over GSZ) for it? i rather pay that 3 or 4 for a scavenging ooze since it provides a good tool (apart from actually being a counter to goyf by itself).
Actually i'm not running it because all the creature i run aren't affected by innocent blood. Being able to run 4 innocent blood and creatures that aren't affected by it is pretty good. I'm actually running 4 Explorer, 2 Broodmate and 4 Huntmaster of the fells + 4 Living Wish. All of those creatures works pretty nicely in combination with Innocent bloods and Pernicious Deeds (and Therapies obviously).
If you take a look at the average mana curve for Nic Fit decks, it should be pretty apparent why no one wants to run Dark Confidant in this deck. Phyrexian Arena, while not a threat, is a lot more stable. Goyf is just kind of meh for this deck. We're not fast enough to capitalize on his presence as a big aggro "hurfderp" guy in the early turns of the game. And anything that runs a decent burn and/or exalted creature package is going to destroy us in the Goyf-on-Goyf wars. That card has really lost some of its shine in the past year or so (and I'm glad it's getting less ubiquitous.)
EDIT (for more content): Been testing a GBw version with a 4 Wish/ 2 GSZ split, using a 3/3 split on Duress and IoK to supplement the Therapies and to use most of the slots that were freed by dropping some of the GSZ package. (I still have a maindeck "gamewinning threat package" of 1 Thrun, 1 Batterskull, and 1 Garruk Primal Hunter, plus some bomby wish targets.) One thing I've noticed that's nice to have more combo hate, between 10 maindeck discard spells, being able to wish for Canonist, Gaddock Teeg, or Thalia, and having 2 Lilianas in the board (although perhaps she belongs in the main and Duress belongs in the side.) I feel like white brings some pretty strong silver-bullet wish targets, such as these guys and Kataki, and Karakas. Also, Massacre Wurm is a pretty good Wish target vs. Maverick. ^^ I'm pretty sure I like him better than Caldera Hellion for the "Damnation on a stick" spot. Although I could maybe see some arguments for Sheoldred, Whispering One as a Wish target also, and they're probably to similar to use together. Hmm... much as Sheoldred is a pet card of mine, she probably gets sent farming way too often without providing any value to justify spending 7 mana (plus a Wish) on that bitch. Although she's basically like an Abyss, + a Recurring Nightmare with no sac cost, + a decent body. *Sigh.* //Rant
On a random note, I'm wondering if anyone sees Darkblast as potentially strong enough for sideboard or maindeck inclusion. There are a lot of x/1s in the meta these days, it seems to me, between Delvers, Mother of Runes, Dark Confidants, Snapcasters, etc, etc. And you can always cast it during your upkeep, dredge it back, and recast it to kill an x/2. (Also I got really annoyed at my Maverick opponent's Sylvan Safekeeper in a few games-- lol.)
Also, I'm interested to hear some feedback and play experiences from those of y'all testing Knight of the Reliquary in a 4 GSZ shell. I'd like to see where a little more "midrange aggro" approach would take this deck.
Also, Garruk Primal Hunter is a house, and I'm pretty strongly considering bumping him up to 2 copies.
Bless your heart, we must consider Blue/White Tempo's strategy and win percentages in an entirely different deck thread. -4eak
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