This is mostly a question to Arianrhod, I saw your scapeshift lists and there was absolutely nothing in the 75 to combat graveyard strategies. Well, I guess you could count slaughter games but to even make it to the point that you could cast that card (turn 3 if you're optimistic off of a tribe elder or explorer) you're probably dead against re-animator or dredge. Another graveyard strategy that would also pretty much be an auto loss is oops all spells. So my question to you is how do you beat those decks? You certainly can't race them to a combo kill, because they're doing it much faster. Thoughtseize or cabal therapy certainly do work in two of the matchups I mentioned but do close to nothing against dredge.
Currently I'm playing one Scavenging Ooze in the main and two Surgical Extractions in the board to combat graveyard strategies, with the added bonus of surgical hosing most every other combo deck out there. I cannot overstate how important that scavenging ooze has been to actually give a reasonable chance against dredge game one. My list is pretty similar to the "Anti-Delver" one Arianrhod posted beyond those changes and no carpets. Carpet of flowers has been nothing but disappointment for me. If you play against miracles they just start fetching plateau or basic plains. Against deathblade they'll fetch scrubland and perhaps lean a bit more on deathrite. Besides, it's not like Carpet of Flowers advances you towards your main goal which is having actual lands in play, not mana in the pool. I understand that perhaps it allows you to cast more "ramp" spells or a fattie faster but why play something that gets deeded away? I just find there's simply no room for the card in the sideboard, especially with so many slots taken up with wish targets. I'm not playing a second thragtusk because I won't go up to 61 cards but I could see having a second as more incentive to play carpets.
My board looks like this right now:
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Massacre
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Innocent Blood
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Liliana of the Veil
3 Slaughter Games
My meta has at least 3 miracles decks in it and slaughter games has always been insane against them. Naming jace is lights out. Especially if you have the deed for entreat. I lived the dream once of casting it twice naming jace and entreat and he was reduced to laughably trying to beat me down with a snapcaster mage (which to his credit he got me reasonably low).
I played against lands at SCG Detroit and he had the nuts two games straight with turn 2 dark depths plus stage because of exploration. Game two he had depths in hand and intuitioned for three stages on my endstep, untapped, played both and I died in short order. The reason I mention this particular matchup is that the only way to reasonably interact with the combo beyond perhaps slaughter games would be surgical. If I had mulliganed more aggressively into one I would have been in good shape to win the game by surgical extractioning one of the stages he had to bin. I asked him after the match what other win conditions he was running and he said the dark depths combo was it beyond punishing fire, which is obviously a slow grindy way of winning but certainly possible. But my point still stands that scapewish needs some way to interact with the graveyard in a manner more timely than slaughter games.
Thoughts on spirit of the labyrinth:
It seems like a sideboard card for the nic fit decks that want to run it. Against most decks, the purpose of it is to gain incremental advantage by disabling cantrips, but it really is not suited for lategame. The body is not big enough to make much of an impact. In addition, it is too narrow to run multiple copies maindeck, and the only ways to tutor for it are slow (academy rector and birthing pod). By the time those cards are active, you'll rarely want to tutor for it and combo will have already won.
In response to the discussion about batterskull, I think I would maindeck it in many versions: it's no more dead against combo than any other bomb.
Just a thought regarding the Miracles matchup: would it be viable to sacrifice Veteran Explorer to Cabal Therapy after they spin Top (referring to tap activated ability: still not sure what 'spinning top' refers to in M:tG terms) so that the top gets shuffled into their library OR they choose to fail to find and we come out two basic lands ahead of them?
Best part is that even if they do brainstorm to save the top, you can still name it with Therapy, meaning the top either gets lost in their library or binned in the yard.
I suppose it would, but how often will they use top in their own turn to draw an extra card? Especially if you have an explorer out they might see the risks of it. Forcing the ability with a abrupt decay seems excessive and better to use the decay for a counterbalance. Blowing up a deed when they have top and you veteran would work though. That will force them to choose.
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
@EpicLevelCommoner & Useless: unfortunately Cabal Therapy is a sorcery so you can't cast it in response to anything.
Regarding Batterskull against combo/Tendrils I tend to keep 2 mystic and 1 skull (boarding out 1 skull) in my junk build. My reasoning is that you need some way of dealing damage to the combo player; lifegain is relevant since they don't always manage to storm more than 20-25 (seems like it to me at least), especially when losing life points; 4 mana for 5 power is ok; it leaves you a body for Cabal Therapy.
And regarding Spirit of the Labyrinth my plan is to use it as a follow up to discard (4 Therapy + 4 Thoughtseize) to prevent opponent from cantripping into a combo. And Living Wish to get it when it's relevant. Also expecting it to help vs Griselbrand and Enter the Infinite.
@ pettdan: True but it doesnt need to be an instant to use effectively in this scenario. Just proper sequencing.
1. Play Cabal Therapy from hand naming Top.
2. They play Top if they miracle it.
3. Play some kind of removal on Top itself.
4. They spin Top to save it.
5. Play Veteran Explorer then retain priority to flashback Cabal Therapy.
6. They Brainstorm in response to Explorer trigger avoid losing Top to their library.
7. When Cabal Therapy resolves, name Top again.
Like UseLess said, Deed plus Vet is way more efficient, but regardless of which method you choose, the ability to disable a key part of their strategy looks very promising for us.
Just to nitpick. You don't have to retain priority on step 5. Between after you cast it and when it resolves you don't have to retain priority because there's no ETB trigger, there's no need for retaining priority because you have it after your opponent chooses if it resolves or not.
It's also a reasonable assumption that they won't care about the top on their library if they have a Jace in hand or anything.
@EpicLevelCommoner: I see, thanks for the explanation!
A couple of pages back Gtf spoke of how hard the Miracles matchup is for Bug Pod and wondered how we could beat it (besides tight play, of course). Aetherling has already been proposed and adopted, and Abrupt Decay usually sits somewhere in the list, so those are a couple of ways to interact with Miracles (in the case of Aetherling rather, to keep Miracles from interacting with you). How viable would having a couple of decent Planeswalkers on the board be? I'm not sure which Planeswalker would be best in Bug colors, but having a Planeswalker on the battlefield that presents a decent threat so that Miracles simply can't sit around and do its thing seems like a reasonable strategy. Thoughts anyone?
@Conch:
My stance on graveyard decks with Scapewish is that it takes too much effort to fix, and therefore isn't worth trying. 2 Surgicals and 1 Ooze is not sufficient to effectively interact with Reanimator, Dredge, Lands, and other such villains -- and I'm saying this as someone whose best friend / roommate mains Reanimator as his deck of choice. He's literally mulled to 4 with Reanimator and beat my keep of 7. It's simply not winnable -- and to fix it would require minimum of 5-7 slots between main and side, which is just infeasible if we want to maintain win percentages against other, more popular decks. Furthermore, most of the effective hate options are narrow (see Tormod's Crypt), and are only useful vs graveyard.
Reanimator is the stone worst of these -- Dredge you can race, and same with Lands. Sometimes Lands will derp into Merit Lage and there's not much you can do about that, but the rest of the time you should be able to race to your combo and just kill them -- they can't interact. Huntmasters and Thragtusks can allow you to soak one hit from Merit Lage -- and if you can get Broodmate Dragon out (if you list runs him at the time), he can soak 2 Lage hits, which should be enough time for you to dig into a Scapeshift or a Wish, hopefully. Vs Dredge, don't forget that your Sakura-Tribe Elders are essentially Surgical Extractions for his Bridge from Belows. Also, don't forget that, while slow, Slaughter Games does technically qualify as graveyard hate. It still does what you want it to do vs Ichorid etc.
As for Carpet, specifically vs Miracles it's kind of a gamble. They do need 1-2 Islands in play to function, and even at 1 Island in play, Carpet is still better than Veteran Explorer is in the matchup. Sometimes the gamble really pays off and they have a hand with like 2 tundra 1 island as their mana sources and your Carpets are huge. Sometimes it doesn't and they have like Island fetch fetch and they play around it. Happens. The thing is that Miracles can take advantage of our Explorers arguably better than we can -- we can both "win the game" with enough basics in play (Entreat vs Scapeshift), but the difference is that they run Force of Will (among other counterspells) and they can protect their counterspells by leaving them on Top of their deck, where we can't interact with Therapy. This gives them the advantage in the ramp war. We need to lean on our Sakura-Tribes and Wood Elves in this matchup. I guess you're suggesting still boarding out Veterans, but just not boarding in any other ramp/fixing to replace them?
The main thing that the Carpets are for are vs the various Delver tempo strategies, where we typically need as much mana ramp as humanly possible to fight through their Stifles/Pierces/Dazes/Wastes/etc. If you're not on the 2nd Thragtusk, I can agree that Carpet loses a bit of its luster....although I would reiterate the importance of the 2nd Thragtusk and would suggest that if you're adamant on staying at 60, cutting a Huntmaster for the 2nd Tusk is likely wise. It's possible that the Carpets are best saved for other versions and that they aren't a great fit for Scapewish, but I need to experiment a bit more before I can make that proclamation. I really enjoy a good Carpet of Flowers -- it's just so incredibly backbreaking for tempo and control decks, but I do need to recognize that my love for the card might be coloring my opinion.
Note that if I were to remove Carpets from my sideboard, I would 100% replace 2 of them with Abrupt Decays (bringing me to 4 Decays total in the anti-delver config). If we can't go over the top of the delver deck, we need to interact with them in more traditional terms.
While we're on the subject of Slaughter Games stories, I had so much fun with Games at SCG Columbus a few years ago -- the one where I made top 16. I played vs Miracles twice -- one match I left him with just snapcasters and 1 clique for win conditions, the other IIRC I took his Force of Wills and just killed him. Then, a few rounds later, I played vs High Tide. Oh my god was that guy a sad panda.
BUG Pod - i "fixed" the common build with:
-1 Veteran Explorer (3 total)
-1 Wood Elves
-1 Abrupt Decay (2 @Side)
-1 Green Sun's Zenith
+1 Deathrite Shaman (4 total)
+1 Trinket Mage (3 Drop Slot)
+1 Engineered Explosives (Removal Slot / Decay)
+1 Pithing Needle (answers many problematic permanents and nobody expects a maindeck needle)
Against Miracle all works good, Deathrite is much stronger than Explorer (nobody wants to ramp into jace/entreat), Trinket Mage (better Body) brings all the good stuff: Needle vs Sensei or if needed Jace, Explosives vs Entreat, Counterbalance or if needed (with Deathrite Mana) for Jace.
Needle vs Sensei is almost the most important move, if the can't use top the will lose most of the time.
I don't fear Miracle with BUG Pod - sure, Entreat & Jace are stronger than most stuff we can cast, but a lot of "enter the battlefield" creatures (against terminus & co) and/or active pod is still aggressiv enough.
TEAM MtG Berlin
Some time ago, I expressed the idea of Combat vs Utility planeswalkers. In a nutshell summary: Utilities are your Jaces, your Lilianas, your Kioras, etc -- they produce card advantage and usually have some variety of removal attached to them. Combat walkers are your Elspeths, your Sorins, your Garruks -- they produce pressure via creating tokens, augmenting the combat step (Elspeth 1.0's redbull), and so forth. I've had a lot of success over time running Combat walkers vs control decks. Legacy is set up to handle Utility walkers -- the Jace and Lily show has dominated for so long that decks are created with ways of dealing with those two. People tend not to run the Combat walkers that much -- and Combat walkers, incidentally, beat the Utility walkers in a heads up confrontation.
Unfortunately for your purpose, most of the combat walkers tend to be white in nature.
Your best bet is probably somewhere in the Garruk family -- Relentless or Primal Hunter. Relentless comes down quicker and does a good bitterblossom impersonation (wolfblossom?), but the tokens are 2/2s and thus trade with Snapcasters. However, Relentless is also more usable vs Delver decks, since at worst case he's a 4-mana removal spell for Delver. Primal Hunter's tokens are better (bigger...they don't trade with Snap and thus keep applying pressure), but he's also slower and his mana is much more restrictive (GGG, baby baby baby). That being said, Primal Hunter also has built in card advantage, and can be a nightmare for control decks because not only does he vomit 3/3s while gaining loyalty, he can also draw 3-5 cards.
-------
This actually has me thinking.
Lorwyn 5:
Jace Beleren -- utility. Best with Sun Titan, which is a color nonbo. Worse than other Jaces in absence of legend rule.
Chandra Nalaar -- utility....no.
Ajani Goldmane -- utility....no.
Liliana Vess -- utility. Reasonable option. 5-spot is rough, but it keeps them hellbent forever and the ult is scary. Can also Demonic Tutor with Top in play.
Garruk Wildspeaker -- utility. Can make a dude, but costs loyalty = bad. Untapping lands could be sweet but Wasteland discourages us from running many cool lands.
Shards:
Elspeth, Knight-Errant -- combat. All-star for white based versions.
Sarkhan Vol -- utility. This actually seems like something that we should consider. Can take their scary thing, or can give a recently played/zenithed guy haste. Ult should win the game.
Tezzeret, the Seeker -- utility. Maybe if some artifact combo ala Vault-Key gets printed.
Ajani Vengeant -- utility. Strong option but suffers from colors -- RW is bad for Nic Fit.
Nicol Bolas, PW -- utility. Arguably the strongest planeswalker in terms of abilities, but Grixis is a bad combination for Nic Fit.
Zendikar:
Nissa Revane -- combat (by virtue of summoning a Chosen). There may be some weird Elves/Nic Fit hybrid somewhere, but I doubt it.
Chandra Ablaze -- haha.
Sorin Markov -- utility. Very color-intensive, but that could be used to our advantage. I could see a straight G/B version with this guy and Grey Merchant.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor -- utility. Obviously one of the best ever.
Gideon Jura -- combat. This guy is underused imo. Can completely take over a board state, and gets abusive with strong / deathtouching blockers, then proceeds to win game. Downside is that he animates, rendering him open to StP.
Sarkhan the Mad -- utility. Strong consideration for jund colors -- has card advantage, can make a Veteran into a 5/5 flyer, ult is lulzy but Broodmate is a card we sometimes play.
Mirrodin 2.0:
Elspeth Tirel -- combat. worse than other Elspeths.
Venser, the Sojourner -- utility. Powerful set of abilities, but UW is a bad color combination for Nic Fit.
Koth of the Hammer -- combat. Probably not good enough for our purposes.
Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas -- combat. Powerful abilities, but needs a very specific build to be taken advantage of. I give the nod to combat because if he animates something that was already in play, it can attack out of nowhere...but he has a lot of utility too.
Karn Liberated -- utility. 2nd most powerful next to Bolas. Castable by any Nic Fit -- only really usable as a singleton, but is definitely strong. Note that his utility is somewhat combative -- why attack Jace TMS when you can just straight exile him?
Innistrad:
Liliana of the Veil -- utility. Obviously insane. Not a huge fan of her in Nic Fit, but she can certainly be good for certain builds in certain situations.
Garruk Relentless -- combat. One of the better Garruks. Flipping can be challenging, but is generally fine as a wolfblossom with upside.
Sorin, Lord of Innistrad -- combat. One of the best combat options. Lifelinking chumpers/attackers adds Time, emblem can be used when on beatdown, ult is very powerful.
Tamiyo, the Moon Sage -- utility. I like Tamiyo, but she's never really actually good enough.
Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded -- you're kidding, right.
Return to Ravnica:
Jace, Architect of Thought -- utility. Powerful card, but better suited to modern where we don't have the 'best' Jace.
Vraska, the Unseen -- utility. Good removal I guess, but the rest of her kit is kind of mediocre.
Domri Rade -- utility. Solid card advantage in conjunction with Top, but our creatures tend to be smaller than your average Goyf, and thus the -2 is probably irrelevant. Getting him to emblem seems strong, though.
Ral Zarek -- utility. Ultimate is nuts for Nic Fit, but he's in bad colors for us and the rest of his kit leaves to be desired.
Gideon, Champion of Justice -- utility.....and no.
Theros:
Elspeth, Sun's Champion -- combat. My pick for most underrated on the list. Yes, she conflicts with the other playable Elspeth. Yes, this Elspeth costs 6. However, 3 dudes for +1 is absolutely bonkers, and her wrath takes out a lot of problems. Unfortunately she's ill-positioned against Delver and True-Name, but she's very strong against basically everything else.
Xenagos, the Reveler -- combat. His wolfblossom is better than Garruk's, since Satyrs have haste. He can also serve as mana generation should that be needed. His ultimate is lackluster, but he's probably still slightly better than Garruk Relentless if you're in GR since Relentless flips so rarely.
Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver -- utility. He/she/it is fast, at 3-mana (which means easily t2able after Therapy/Explorer). He/She/It protects themselves by putting something taken into play, which most of legacy's CMC is so low that they'll always be able to get something. I dunno -- this is a consideration.
Kiora, the Crashing Wave -- utility. I loveeeeeee Kiora. She forces the opponent to overcommit into your Deed, she stops lifelink from opposing Batterskulls, she stops Jitte from getting counters (obviously if they only have one creature), she ramps, she cantrips, and her emblem wins games.
Ajani, Mentor of Heroes -- utility. Kind of a question mark. Might be better than he first looked....not sure.
Core Set Upgrades:
Ajani, Caller of the Pride -- ....no
Chandra Pyromaster -- utility. Good card advantage, reasonable +1, useless ultimate. I'd guess that she's playable in the same way as she is in modern -- as a 1-of for value.
Chandra, the Firebrand -- utility. Interesting kit with interesting abilities. Her -2 is very build-around. Her +1 is whatever, and her ult is whatever. But copying a Zenith for 5 is insane, let alone if we go deeper, like, say, Genesis Wave....which goes well with Xenagos.....hmmmm....
Jace, Memory Adept -- -- utility. This guy amuses me. He's worse than Jace TMS in the abstract, but he actually kills a lot quicker. I think that this might be the solution to the BUG Pod Miracles problem -- what they hell are they doing to do to him?
Garruk, Primal Hunter -- combat. Good guy, mana intensive, but produces powerful tokens and threatens card advantage. Ult wins the game on the next untap...or immediately if there's a Sarkan Vol involved.
Garruk, Caller of Beasts -- utility. Utility Garruk is bad Garruk. I would rather play Ajani-green over this guy.
Liliana of the Dark Realms -- utility. no.
There's a breakdown of all of the planeswalkers which are currently in existence. When Dack comes out, he'll be a "utility - no."
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The take-away:
Jace, Memory Adept is probably the control breaker that BUG Pod is looking for. Ashiok is another reasonable option, but shines more against things like Shardless and Deathblade than it does vs Miracles.
Xenagos and Chandra, Firebrand go reallllllllllly well together. I've been thinking about Genesis Wave for a little while now, and this is probably the angle to attack it from. Warp World is arguably better, but unfortunately planeswalkers don't come in off of Warp, so that kind of caboshes that.
Most of the best planeswalkers are white. Elspeth, Sun's Champion is the Titan-cycle of planeswalkers. She's expensive, but she's worth it. The issue is dealing with Delver and TNN -- she handles literally everything else.
Both Sarkhans are probably under-utilized -- especially Vol, which is very powerful in conjunction with a certain class of cards.
Kiora is love, Kiora is life.
@Arianrhod
Thanks for your comprehensive analysis of the planeswalkers. My initial thoughts were to try out either 2 Primal Hunter or 2 Kiora in the board for the Miracles matchup. Primal Hunter as you say puts a lot of pressure on the board and has two other reasonably good abilities (though I'd be careful about the ultimate, since it can be wiped away with Terminus), and getting to three trees to cast him seems feasible (though less so when you take Explorer out for the second game). Kiora, on the other hand, presents an ultimate that wins the game very quickly and protects herself while doing so (while providing a Coiling Oracle effect if you need it). I overlooked Memory Adapt, probably because who really thinks of milling someone as a viable win condition in Legacy? My instinct is to try out Primal Hunter first, since unlike Memory Adapt, I feel like he'd be viable versus other controllish decks (e.g., Deathblade, Jund, Shardless, etc.) whereas Memory Adapt wouldn't be. Again, thanks for the advice.
From experience:
I played Ashiok in my BUG walker fit during 2 months (as a 1-of). It did win me a lot of games against miracle (close to each time I drew it). I imagine Jace, Memory adept would be "faster" in killing but I like the fact that Ashiok is "growing" in loyalties, making it a real pain for Miracle players (quickly out of reach for a clique / SCM).
Anyway, Liliana of the Veil is already such a pain in the as... for Miracle that I would firstly stick with her before considering other options to deal with Control.decks (notwithstanding that she also "represents" kind of inevitability against combo when their hand is depleted...) .
Nicol Bolas / Karn liberated are amazing but can realistically be cast in so few match-ups for NicFit that I doubt they have a room in Legacy right now.
I strongly encourage anyone to try the "green" walkers (relentless and Primal) as they are "DAT" powerful against midrange.decks and help you to overwhelm your opponent's board.
To conclude, as far as legacy is concerned, NicFit "walkers" should at least play Liliana of the Veil. It is just the best "utility" walker for NicFit.
I like the idea of one of the Garruks moreso than Kiora or Ashiok. The reasoning is that if they are playing O-Ring/Detention Sphere and find it for the planeswalker, the latter two have accomplished almost nothing (in Kiora's case, actually nothing if you didn't get to ultimate). The Garruks at least have been pressuring them the whole time and left behind a bunch of creatures they have to deal with. The creatures are also useful for attacking Jace, which is the real way Miracles wins. Garruk Relentless has the advantage of being less mana and the tutoring ability could occasionally be relevant in a pod list. Primal Hunter is more powerful once it's in play. My plan involves siding out Veteran Explorers, which makes me shy away from playing Primal Hunter. A disadvantage of Relentless is that a flashed-in V. Clique kills it in one swing.
A trinket mage to find Needle would also help immensely - Needle is great against Miracles and is the single best answer to Top. It has some negative synergy with Deed, but after playing the matchup, I think Deed is actually not that great. A few could stay in as insurance against entreat the angels, but it is an extremely inefficient answer to counterbalance (5 mana total), blows up our own permanents, which we need to pressure them, and can't deal with a Jace at all.
Deed was a lot more relevant against Miracles when they were on the RIP/Helm plan, because you could let it sit there and use it to stop their combo from being assembled. It's definitely not as good against them anymore.
Went 5-2-1 at Tales 40 duals tournament yesterday with 2 unintentional draws early making it all the way to the last round before getting knocked out
I played Kevins anti-combo scapewish list
Shardless BUG 2-0
Punishing maverick depths- 1-1-1
UWr Delver 2-0
Paintedstone 1-1-1
Shardless BUG 2-1
Lands 2-1
4c Deathblade 1-2
Slaughtergames was amazing against paintedstone and Lands in the main deck and I was fortunate enough not to draw them in my other match-ups, and Huntmaster of the fells won me almost every game. throughout the day I wished I had a second Eternal witness to GSZ for, why was the second one cut? just too narrow?
Playing the deck yesterday I thought I played very well in all the games but feel like I stumbled alot with side boarding, Im always hesitant to take out any ramp and usually just bring in 2 cards and cut the slaughtergames in fair matchups, does anyone have a sideboard guide for the anti-combo version for these MU?
Trinket + EE covers the same bases as deed vs entreat as well. Just a thought. Needle's good, and when you go down that path, EE's also relevant and you can even run a SB GY hate to fix any problems that you might have in that matchup (even though I haven't had a ton of problems vs reanimator or dredge since i've gone up to 4 DRS's anyway) in tormod's crypt (i wouldn't run relic ever).
EE also can hit troublesome planeswalkers too with a bit of finagling (cough JTMS). And that's not even to say that needle isn't a great answer to a lot of things mainboard. It's a dead card preboard vs rug delver decks (and storm, really), but it's not vs everything else pretty much. Needle on top and EE on 0 vs Miracles is a good place to be in, and you're basically fighting through jaces and v.cliques which is a much better fight to be having than the other aspect of the deck.
I'll probably swing that package this thursday after I finish up my standard testing for SCGNJ this weekend... or I'll end up playing audibling to TES. One of the two.
People were talking about walkers in Nic Fit and specifically the ones good against miracles and I have to put in a vote for Kiora. I had a friend playing it in his Bant sideboard to bring in against all the miracles decks in our meta. One of the miracles players at my shop called it "Unbeatable." I am a little afraid that it's a bit narrow though, because so many of the top decks play true name (which you obviously can't target) or lightning bolt or delver. Still, some of these delver decks play one threat and then try to counter everything else you play for the rest of the game. If you strip him of all his counters and stick the kiora it neutralizes delver. Other decks Kiora could be good against: Cloudpost, MUD, Shardless bug (depending on how threat dense), Pox by virtue of how threat light they are, but probably not delver decks. The aforementioned friend brought in kiora against me while I was playing Sam Blacks Zombardment deck and targeted my goblin bombardment, which was sadly enough to win him the game.
Re: Slaughter Games stories. Versus high tide in a tournament for a Moat, in game one I burning wished for slaughter games. My opponent read the card and kept setting up to go off by making land drops, cantripping, and playing candles. I cast it on turn 4 and he tries to force of will it. I pointed at the first line of the card and his face just kind of sank. After naming high tide he immediately scooped. Game two I shredded his hand and slaughter games again sealed the game. This time he cunning wished for the one high tide in his sideboard and tried to go off anyway, but alas, one high tide was nowhere near enough to do anything with.
On Trinket Mage in Bug Pod:
If one were to run him, how many fetchable artifacts do you think you'd need to run maindeck for him to be useful?
Also, while Engineered Explosives seems an obvious inclusion if one runs Trinket Mage, is a maindeck Pithing Needle really where you want to be? Or would you rather have something like Nihil Spellbomb maindeck?
On Kiora:
I can see how she would be unbeatable versus Miracles, or at least very good--but why would you want to bring her in versus a Delver deck at all? I can see bringing her in against midrange decks where she's going to have time to build up to her ultimate, but four mana for an approximation of Maze of Ith against a deck that wants to tempo you out doesn't seem very good to me. Granted, I haven't tested with her, so maybe I'm just underestimating her in this type of matchup, but right now I envision two spots on Bug Pod's board for two walkers that will help with the control matchups (specifically Miracles but also Deathblade, Jund, and Shardless) as opposed to the tempo and aggro matchups. The Delver decks already seem like good MU's, so I think you'd just board in your third Deed. I agree with you though that Kiora might be decent against something like Cloudpost, which takes several turns to set up.
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