+1Originally Posted by Arianrhod
The reason why I don't play 4 copies of Jace is because it is bad in multiples when you haven't reached 4 mana. Finding 3 copies is not an issue, and he isn't my main win condition. Having 4 Jace is fine when he is at the top of your curve and essential to your gameplan. As it is now, he is a great source of CA and a great alternate win con but that's about it.
As for the lands, I have as many colored sources as I always had in any Nic Fit deck. I play 23 lands because 3 of them are colorless.
Stronghold has been my main source of attrition in all of my successful Nic Fit decks. GSZ@6 for Prime Time grants you Tower + Stronghold which allows you to convert your draw step into a Thragtusk or a Witness per turn.
As for Damnation and Carpet in the SB, I dismissed them both a long time ago for a very simple reason:
there is nothing already in the mainboard that isn't good against fair decks. The mainboard of Nic Fit is and should always be 100% dedicated to fair matchups because trying to fit in reliable hate for combo is a bit like trying to fit 20 blue cards in Elves to support FoW, it sucks. I only get 15 slots to combat combo and I want to use them all. I remember that whenever I would land a Carpet vs. a blue deck, it was rewarding and fun, and then I realized that you really don't need it to dominate them, and that they quickly become dead cards. To me, Carpet is a textbook example of a win-more card.
Play damnation if active mother + revoker is a common thing in your meta, otherwise, take the game loss, they earned it...
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...
massacre is also an option vs white, and you can use it to kill off your veteran explorers as well early in the game.
-rob
In general I think that a heavy anti-combo SB supported with a few slots dedicated to the decks you are most likely going to face is the way to go. Don't fall into the trap of "anti combo tunnel vision". There is nothing wrong with improving fair matchups with a few effective cards if you most likely have to play that matchup multiple times a day.
Blue decks (Carpet): RUG, BUG Control, Blade, Miracles, Team America
creature decks (Damnation): RUG, Team America, D&T, Maverick, Tribal aggro, other random Aggro (Dragon Stompy, Zoo)
Carpet of Flowers:
against Miracles/Stoneblade:
- Explorers are quite bad against Stoneblade and Miracles. They play as much Brainstorm/Jace as we so if one side decided to dedicate a card to ramp both players the outcome is not always favorable for that deck. Having one Explorer for GSZ is enough for spell heavy hands. I like the + 3 Carpet - 3 Explorer switch here so you have the same amount of extra Mana in the deck to cast Titan but without the drawback of ramping them into Jace, giant Entreat the Angels, Karakas/Clique and doing whatever they want with Snapcaster.
- You don't need 4 Decay and 4 Deed against them.
- Scavenging Ooze is bad, too.
against RUG / Team America:
- Primeval Titan, second Witness and Dust Bowl seem useless
- you are happy about any additional colored Mana source in the SB
against BUG Control:
- the matchup is very hard because they have so much CA so any help from the SB is good
Damnation:
Isn't Death and Taxes a thing everywhere? Regular Top16 in SCG as well as double top8 in Euro GPs. And they all play 4 Mother of Runes and 4 Phyrexian Revoker. It also fixes the deck's weakness against Tombstalker. Your list has only three outs against a resolved Tombstalker (Jace) and that is only temporary. Jace+Therapy can work but it is quite hard to pull off against the 4 Hymn deck.
Quick summary --
-) 5-drops are fine in larger quantities. You can get away with 4+ 5s. I wouldn't run more than a pair of 6s-and-ups, though. So like, 2 titans, 1 titan and 1 7-drop, etc.
-) Sakura-Tribe is WAY better than Yavimaya. STE is a 2-drop and it ramps instantly, whereas Yavimaya just puts the lands in your hand (doesn't actually ramp) and takes a turn to get sacrificed, assuming it doesn't eat a Swords on sight. Also, STE is random dredge hate.
-) Vraska is genuinely atrocious. Assume that she has her +1 ability in place as a piece of cardboard, and don't touch her.
-) Gerrard's Verdict is playable, but I don't think that it's worth running more than something like Thoughtseize. Sculpting their hand is a better course of action.
-) Big Garruk is fine to play in Junk, you just need to be careful with what colors you get.
I'd echo Tao's thoughts on Carpet here, and also note that you can use the Carpet mana during your turn to play creatures/sorceries, and then hold up your lands for countermagic. Likewise, if you want to run the more "powerful/slow" hate cards, like Cranial Extraction, it ramps you up to them before the opposing combo deck can really get online most of the time.
Damnation is solid against Elves, aside from shoring up other matchups. I agree that it isn't really necessary, though -- now, if suddenly the Maverick or DnT players in your area start figuring out how to play the matchup, then maybe. For other people who would want to work on your list for their metas (Tao), then almost assuredly. But from what I've heard of your meta specifically, I'd agree that Damnation isn't needed.
"Blue decks (Carpet): RUG, BUG Control, Blade, Miracles, Team America
creature decks (Damnation): RUG, Team America, D&T, Maverick, Tribal aggro, other random Aggro (Dragon Stompy, Zoo)"
I don't understand why you two are so obsessed with ramping against blue decks.
-RUG is a bye, and EtI/Sneak Show aren't, even with 15 SB slots dedicated to them so lets move on from there and agree this is a non-argument.
-BUG Control doesn't always have basics and the games go long at which point you both make all your land drops and reach whatever state of mana you desire. Exploding with a Carpet is a worthless gamble because without it, the deck is all fuel and disruption that outmatches theirs. The only control deck that should make you consider bringing in more than Negate and FoW is 12-Post, and that deck is fairly rare. You don't need ramp against control because you are the bigger control deck, always.
(FYI, I hope it is assumed here that the deck goes -3 Explorers, -4 Deed/Decay for most control matchups and that Negates/FoW come in)
-Blade decks are a joke. Deal with Batterskull and counter Jace and there you have it. Once again, you are the bigger control deck, so don't even bother with ramp. Be satisfied with 1 land per turn, it will get you there... like 99% of the time.
-Miracles... Miracles!? This matchup is a joke with 8 counterspells post board. They. Cannot. Kill. Us. Keep your Deeds for entreat and CB, keep your Decays for CB, bring in the counters and Jace them out or land a Prime for both towers and loop tusks until they concede.
-Team America can be tough because of their heavy disruption (FoW, Hymn) and their fliers (Delver, Tombstalker). I agree that when the tempo matchup can ignore explorer, an alternate source of ramp can be necessary. However, look at the amount of combo decks out there, then play all of them 10 times each with the best anti-combo SB you can think of. First you'll question Nic Fit as a deck choice against a combo meta, and then you might realize that these matchups are so difficult compared to the rest of the fair field that you want as much hate as you can get.
As for Damnation, I would personally take Engineered Plague over it but that's beside the point. The deck is built for aggro and aggro is favorable no matter how you choose to put it. 2 Damnations and 3 Carpets in my SB leaves me 10 slots to deal with GY based combo, Storm based combos, SnT decks (Sneak, Omni, EtI), and all the other miscellaneous unfair decks...
Tell me sincerely, how many games against Maverick, RUG, Team America, Zoo, Tribal, DnT... because you didn't have Damnation and/or Carpet?
How many games have you lost to combo because you didn't have enough hate?
My guess is that if you think the first one occurs enough to be significant compared to the second, you haven't played enough.
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...
Why am I so obsessed with improving the matchup against other blue decks? Take a look at the top 5 Legacy decks. Having an insane card against the top 5 most popular decks of the format sounds pretty good.
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post731464
Maybe it is you who has not played enough if you consider RUG a bye and Miracles/Blade a joke. RUG is favorable but no bye, especially for the blue version. They have two ways to win. Either their ridiculous double Stifle + flipped Delver + Daze and the last two hand cards FoW + blue card draw. Or punishing you if you have to keep a mediocre hand. In both cases Carpet does amazing work. It can beat even the most ridiculous draws of RUG (or at least draw the FoW on turn 1) and it can turn your bad draws into good ones.
Games against Stoneblade and Miracles are a hard fight on pretty even footing. At least in my experience. Nic Fit is not actually that much bigger than them. What "big" do we have? 3-4 Jaces (they too), a Thrun and a Titan. That is certainly not enough bigger than them to just sit back and Abrupt Decay their stuff while they create CA with Snapcasters, Stoneforge Mystics or shape their hand with Sensei's Top.
The player who gets ahead usually wins and Carpet does just that. It fuels your GSZ's to have a Titan instead of a Witness, it lets you have a Jace before they do and it makes your Witnesses insane.
I am pretty sure nothing but Decay resolves against those double daze/delver/fow/stifle and whatever else god hand they get, not even carpet. This is why RUG and BUG tempo decks are top tier decks.
I will admit that saying RUG is a bye was an exaggeration, but I assumed it was understood that beating RUG didn't require any help from the SB. IMO, Nic Fit has one of the best matchups against RUG.
What is so "Big" that we have against stoneblade and miracles? Considering that there are 8 cards that allow us to see their hand and potentially rip it apart, that we can play around soft counters like Spell Pierce, that Spell Snare is irrelevant, that Counterbalance is mediocre against 4 Deeds, 4 Decays, and such a plastic curve, that we have 8 hard counters post-board, that GSZ immediately converts into the best card in our GY or the best creature we can afford for the current state of the game, that we have a nearly unstoppable attrition engine... These matchups boil down to Jace wars, except that we have a good chance of fighting through a Jace while they have none.
Oh ya, Snapcaster doesn't generate card advantage when a 2/1 body doesn't cost you a card to deal with. Card advantage is only relevant when every card you own is worth as much as your opponent's.
If you think I haven't played enough, consider this:
-I have been playing Magic for 11 years, and Legacy exclusively for 6 years
-I have been developing Nic Fit for over 2 years
-I play a different deck roughly every month, therefore
-I have piloted every deck you mentioned above, and even contributed to some (Stoneblade being an important one)
-I have participated in over 100 sanctioned events (probably closer to 200-300 but who counts at that point...)
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...
I have some experience in this format, too, and found it surprising that it got doubted.
Anyway, I think you underestimate Stoneblade and Miracles severely by overestimating your own cards and not respecting theirs.
Stoneblade deck have their own Discard spells, they have multiple ways of creating card advantage that require completely different answers like Lingering Souls, Dark Confidant, Notion thief, Clique/Karakas or additional Planeswalkers so you can't just sit back and hope to have the right answer, wait to be able to pay for Spell Pierce (no one plays Spell Snare) and then trump them with Titan. And with Geist or Clique + Snapcaster they can very well fight through our Jace, too. This matchup is not one-sided in our favor, at all.
While I don't especially know anything about, or indeed care about, the intricacies of this particular version of blue Nic Fit, I find the tone of the discussion quarrelsome and the lack of respect shocking. You two have both been in this thread since the very beginning [Tao] and shortly thereafter [Qweerios]. We've always managed to have a civil discourse before, even when completely and utterly disagreeing on some facet of the deck's design. Comparing our e-peens serves to accomplish nothing other than to make our deck and our community look like tools -- if two of the players with the most history with the archetype are regarding themselves and each other in such a fashion, then how do you think that reflects on the deck?
By all means continue discussion and so on and so forth; but please keep it civil. There's no reason to tear into each other with such venom. We're all Nic Fitters here -- and it's basically us vs world. Well, maybe us + aggro loam + junk vs the world =)
Yeah, we don't want to look like a bunch of storm players.
Retired Berserk Stompy player
Current Decks: Scapewish NicFit, Grixis Affinity, Green Zombardment
Amen. you are awesome Qweerios <3
Fixed that for you
/barn
Or however that goes.
On a different tangent, I'll be at GP Vegas. Make sure any of you crazy guys gonna be there hit me up!
So jelly. Are you going to be doing any legacy side events while you're there, you think? Or just focusing on the main event / signatures / any MM-related side events?
EDZ: and yes, that's exactly how the /barn works. I'll make mafia players out of you all yet :P
It's nuts here. Don't be jelly.
If I scrub out of the main event chances are I'll hop in a legacy side event or two.
I am not doubting Tao's experience, I am sure he has plenty. What I posted earlier is that I think that:
You will not lose a significant portion of your aggro/tempo matches because you lack Damnation/Carpet in your SB.
You will lose a significant portion of your combo matches if you do not have at least 12-14 pieces of hate against them.
Thinking otherwise as a Nic Fit player makes me doubt the quality of your experience.
I have no quarrels with Tao. I don't know what gave such impression, we are having a disagreement. From the beginning of this threat Tao has been the one I have been most in agreement with. I may be a little overzealous when I believe that we are arguing over something fundamental, and yet, it appears to be misunderstood.
Nic Fit had success when the meta was Maverick/RUG-heavy and very combo-light. It dedicated almost all of its SB to combo decks even though combo was quasi-extinct because those were the matchups that were troublesome. Nic Fit is a metagame deck built with a premise, that you will win against the fair field because we play the best removal, the best threats, and the most ridiculous attrition. Nic Fit is not as well-balanced as most of its contributors think it is.
Nic Fit is completely naked when it comes to combo. My last 2 rounds this week were against combo decks and I played 4 Stifle, 4 Daze, 4 Fow, 4 Brainstorm 4 Ponder, 2 Pierce, and sided an additional 2 Pierce, 2 Dimir Charm, 2 Surgical.... I still lost 1-2 to T.E.S. and Sneak Show.
Also, let's not put Esperblade(SFM, Jace, Souls, Counterspells) and Deathblade(SFM, Bob, Jace, Deathrite, Discard) in the same basket. Esperblade is more reactive and has much heavier disruption and a slower clock that relies on a couple of cards. They are more likely to try and Jace you out with counter backup. Deathblade is more proactive, has a very low blue count and uses a fish approach with a lot of CA. They have more small annoyances that have to be dealt with and much less disruption. They will use their Jace for CA and take a much bigger hit from Deed.
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...
@Gitaxian Probe: Clear 4-off. Best thing ever and I feel stupid for not getting it earlier. Turning the first Therapy into a Thoughtseize is amazing, it feels like it improved every matchup by 5% lol.
@Damnation: The main problem is that your list had only fringe solutions that rarely work against Tombstalker and against Mother/Revoker. I used to split Deed/Damnation, maybe that could be the way, too. Either way, in the MD or the SB, I think at least a few solutions for these cards are necessary (Tombstalker more than Mother/Revoker).
Maybe something like 3 Deed, 3 Decay, 1 Pulse, 1 Damnation could work for the main deck and that would give you 2 more SB slots.
@Carpet:
Carpet is a unique card because it is a) extremely good and b) extremely likely to get sided in. If you play a 7 round tournament you will probably side this in about 4 times in average. And it will be the card that you want most in your opening hand every time. There is no other card that does that, not even close.
I know that the Combo matchup needs a lot of help from the SB but this is not about strictly following the goal of improving the Combo matchup as much as possible. Even if the matchups Carpet improves are favorable, they are not favorable enough to throw away such a unique chance to improve them all.
Damnation works fine when Deed won't cut it. Deed is superior in almost every cases. Go ahead and split Deed with Damnation if you please, there is nothing wrong with that. I chose to deal with Tombstalker/Iona with Jace and Selkie Hedge-Mage. While it is true that Deed can be Revoked and Stifled, Damnation can be Teeged and wipes your side of the board as well. In short, they both have their pros and cons, however, I wouldn't touch Decay or meddle with Pulse. The latter is a thing of the past.
Carpet is great, no doubt about it. Carpet isn't good against any combo deck out there so its not worth the SB space. Look at the amount of cards in the main that are completely dead against fair decks, then look at the amount of cards in the main that are completely dead against combo.
-4 Deed, -4 Decay, -3 Explorers, -1 Thrun, -1 Thragtusk, -1 Prime Titan against most combo decks out there right off the bat. Jace isn't that great either but at least hes blue and digs for additional answers.
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...
- if you split your removal it will be less likely to end up with two Deeds in hand against a Tombstalker and impossible to end up with 2 Damnations against Teeg. It will usually be better to draw 1 Damnation, 1 Deed than to draw 2 Deed.
- "Carpet isn't good against any combo deck out there so its not worth the SB space."
If your exclusive goal is to be as good against Combo post board as possible that is true. If you want to optimize your deck to win tournaments it is not. You can still beat Combo with 12 SB cards, you can still lose to Combo even with 15 SB cards. You are still favored against RUG without Carpets, you can still lose to RUG even with Carpets.
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