Switch the 2 Bloodstained Mires for 2 Marsh Flats. At least those allow you to fetch Savannah. I'd also switch the Dustbowl for another Bayou. You aren't hitting 14 initial G/B mana. Switch an Ooze for a 3rd Top, library manipulation is your friend. Also drop the Persecutor for a 2nd DRS, a Tireless Tracker and a Courser of Kruphix. This deck grinds out the opponent with CA, not beat them to 0 and wait to get rid of your beater. Titania, Thragtusk and Grave Titan are enough as top end finishers.Originally Posted by Dalton!
Thank you. That was helpful.
What about Nylea, GOd of he hunt? OK? Not OK? Only ok?
Arianrhod seems to like it. 4 mana for a green sometimes 6/6 indestructible manasink (that helps you protect your own creatures or kill your opponent) sounds like at least worth a try. Trample is pretty cool.
I think Nylea and Gitrog go very, very well together, and both BUG / GB would be interested in Chameleon Colossus, who also goes very, very well with Nylea. At the end of the day, Nic Fit is still a synergy-based deck. Having interlocking card choices like that usually leads to good results.
I keep going back and forth on Courser. It's strong with Tracker and it's strong with Brainstorm -- they get perfect information, but it upgrades Brainstorm to Draw 3, Put 1 Back for U, which is insane. At the same time, when you don't have the manipulation for it, I've only ever been kind of disappointed by it. Without manip, it seems like the card never does anything other than give your opponent information.
@TTX: what did you cut for Courser? If you kept the 2nd Tracker, how did it feel having two of them? Sucks you hit Reanimator, but that's one of the matchups that I accepted throwing away. Note that I am referring to paper with my brews, as I'm not on modo yet, and I'm assuming you were testing on modo, where tier 3 combo decks like Reanimator are still popular. As for why not Food Chain, the answer is that while adorable, Food Chain is fundamentally a bad deck. In order to function to spec, it needs to be insanely greedy with its mana base, and it gets to run very little protection. It masquerades as a combo/control deck, but I don't know that I have ever seen it actually capable of controlling a game. A more apt analogy would be that it's a "hold-on-for-dear-life/combo" deck. I'll stick to my card advantage, Deeds, and synergy-based bomb deployments.
@Sergi: Vigor is an interesting one, but I think that the problem it runs into is that the non-white midrange/control decks aren't the category of deck that we're really trying to improve, and against those decks in particular, Primeval Titan will do just as good of a job while being better against white decks due to its ETB trigger.
@Brael: TPreds is very good, but I don't think the metagame calls for him right now. I could be mistaken in this. The last time Predator was good was when Esperblade was around -- now, it's good vs....Death and Taxes and Painter? Miracles should be boarding out their Counterbalances, and at best you get to annoy them and make them re-cast Top every turn. I'm not sure what else the card does in the metagame atm.
Tracker with Daze is hilarious. I'm not sure that's really an interaction for us, per se, but I can just imagine the look on someone's face when you Daze them out of Nic Fit. It'd be like fucking candid camera.
My big issue with Shardless is Zenith, since cascade and Zenith has never worked well together. That being said, Shardless Agent in the theoretical Traverse builds sounds great. Cascading into an early Traverse isn't ideal, but it's not wasted -- and later on, it's just great. Plus, Shardless is 2 card types for Delirium. Side realization: if we are reliably capable of achieving Delirium, Invasive Surgery might be something that we would want to consider for the sideboard of that deck. It's likely that we will just get Rest in Peaced anyway, but if they just don't draw it and we can actually counter+surgical their Terminuses, that seems amazing. Even without Delirium, it still counters Terminus for U.
Brainstorm is a challenging concept, especially with Tracker. Brainstorm raises the internal consistency of a deck a lot, just by existing and being itself. It mitigates flood and screw a lot. Tracker /also/ mitigates flood, although he doesn't really do much if you're screwed. Obviously, in a vacuum, both of these cards are fine. Tracker is fine without Brainstorm, and v.v.. The situation you describe, Brainstorm with a Tracker in play, sounds a lot like a first world problem to me.
Scenarios:
A: You Brainstorm, put back 1 land and something you don't want, and keep a Fetch in hand. Play it, break it, 2 clues + a shuffle out of the deal. This is the best case scenario, I think. You trade lands for gas, while still getting your shuffle and a pair of clues.
A2: You Brainstorm, have two lands you can put back and a Zenith for a shuffle effect, but then you don't get any clues. You can either accept this and say that there will always be more land drops in the future, or if you really want a clue, you can keep one of the lands, make your drop for the turn, and choose to replace one of the cards in your hand with a random card from the clue draw. Might be better, might be worse.
B: You Brainstorm, have a billion lands in your hand. Put back two, shuffle, still have lands in hand but at least you have clues to mitigate.
B2: You Brainstorm, have a billion lands in your hand, and can't shuffle. Tracker will help dig you out of your Brainstorm lock.
C: You Brainstorm, don't get / have any lands, and you shuffle with a Zenith. Tracker is a French Vanilla 3/2.
C2: You Brainstorm, don't get / have any lands, and can't shuffle. Tracker is a French Vanilla 3/2.
None of this really seems that bad except for C/C2, and that's mostly because we don't like being stuck on 3 lands. Even in a world where we're stuck on 3, we probably have a bunch of gas and interaction if we kept the hand, so Tracker's 3/2 body is still going to be reasonable -- and at the point at which we hit any land, we can play it, play a 2-drop, and crack the clue -- or a fetch becomes a Draw 2, which will help move us forward out of the screw.
I will acquiesce that Brainstorm and Tracker will sometimes lead to challenging situations where it can be very difficult to correctly determine what to put back with Brainstorm. But these situations should be both fairly rare and also are an embarrassment of riches.
Side topic / brewing note: at some point we might want to revisit the old Landfall builds with Lotus Cobra. Cobra and Tireless Tracker seems like a match made in heaven.
@Warden: Sorry to hear. If it makes you feel any better, vintage didn't go well for me personally either (although my car contained both a top 16 and a top 8). Just kept getting outdrawn in hilarious fashion, and Cabal Therapy's curse followed me back a format: I Thoughtseized, saw garbage, his draw for turn is Ancestral.
If you move off of Rhino, where do you want to look from there? There's certainly plenty of ground within Nic Fit that's already explored (hue), or you could try to build your own version specifically for your tastes and interests, or you could pick a different deck (probably 4c aggroloam would be the closest to your home territory?). Keep me posted on your thoughts, I'll help as able.
So, I just brewed up this absolute pile.
BUGw Nic Fit - 250 cards
96 lands
36 fetch (all but Arid Mesa)
20 dual
22 basic
4 Horizon Canopy
13 utility (incl. Karakas, Tower, Volrath's, Academy Ruins, maybe manlands)
1 Dakmor Salvage
49 interaction
16 discard (Therapy, Thoughtseize, Inquisiton, Hymn)
8 sweeper (4 Deed 2 Deluge 2 Damnation)
13 spot removal (4 Path 4 Swords 4 Decay 1 Darkblast)
8 vindicates (4 pulse 2 vindicate 2 unmaking)
4 snapcaster
64 filter/tutor
12 creature (zenith, traverse, summoner's pact)
12 universal (gifts ungiven, intuition, intent)
4 entomb
4 crop rotation
4 enlightened tutor
4 bring to light
4 truths
4 tracker
4 top
4 brainstorm
4 witness
4 enlightened tutor
41 cards that do things
4 vet
4 deathrite
4 battle of wits
4 life from the loam
3 academy rector
3 narcomoeba
2 the gitrog monster
1 wild mongrel
1 dryad arbor
1 gaddock teeg
1 reclamation sage
1 unburial rites
1 thragtusk
1 skirge familiar
1 mind over matter
1 worm harvest
1 dread return
1 recurring nightmare
1 meren of clan nel toth
1 crucible of worlds
1 elixir of immortality
1 Scavenging Ooze
Wishboard:
1 Skirge Familiar
1 The Gitrog Monster
1 Buried Ruin
1 Wasteland
1 Karakas
1 Academy Rector
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Dakmor Salvage
1 Boseiju, who Shelters all
1 Maga, Traitor to Mortals
1 Cavern of Souls
4 whatever
Intuition -> Rector, Therapy, Unburial Rites into Battle of Wits.
Gitrog combos with most of the deck. Skirge Familiar in particular is absolutely ridiculous. If you can assemble Toad + Discard outlet + Salvage, you go off in some absurd manner that probably ends in an arbitrarily large amount of life drain from Maga. I dunno, you have a load of mana and mill and all sorts of bullshit, I'm sure you can win somehow.
Well, that's one way to fix the problem of never having enough space.
Rhino can, at times, be lackluster in given metagames, so I understand the pain. I think if you're a no-sir on Rhino, then you're more looking towards the Angel build, but I feel like raising the curve a whole ton isn't where you want to be. The whole good thing about Rhino is the power at 4 mana, and the tutoring.
I think if you're saying Rhino is dirt, and you're playing 4, cutting it and adding 2x 5 drops and 2x 3 drops wouldn't be that bad, but slamming another 4x 5 drops seems tricky. Or, I guess you could just run 4x control walkers and dirt the fuck out of the midrange matchups. #Shrekt.
I could see this, I'm not sure how to turn on Delirium quickly though. Our best tool for that in BUG is Baleful Strix but that's still relying on one of our creatures to die rather than eat a Swords to Plowshares, and even when it does die neither GSZ or Therapy are all that great for getting us a sorcery. Delirium seems tough to do, I play Traverse in Modern and my biggest hurdle is always in getting a creature into my GY, that seems even more difficult here. Delirium really requires filling the deck with a lot of air like Probe, Ponder, etc... It's best use is that it's another threat while letting you keep your spell count high, we don't really take advantage of that though.
I think I still lean towards Top over Brainstorm, even with blue. We want a selection effect too often, Brainstorm, Ponder, and Preordain, maybe even Serum Visions would all want to be in here.... why use that many spaces when Top will suffice?Brainstorm is a challenging concept, especially with Tracker. Brainstorm raises the internal consistency of a deck a lot, just by existing and being itself. It mitigates flood and screw a lot. Tracker /also/ mitigates flood, although he doesn't really do much if you're screwed. Obviously, in a vacuum, both of these cards are fine. Tracker is fine without Brainstorm, and v.v.. The situation you describe, Brainstorm with a Tracker in play, sounds a lot like a first world problem to me.
A single Entomb can get either a Strix or a Courser and lock up 3 card types, plus fetches are super easy for a land. If there's something involving Delirium here, it's almost certainly going to involve Entomb or Careful Study/Faithless Looting. Of course, at that point, you need to justify not running a reanimate package -- what are you doing with Delirium that's worth warping the deck around to that degree?
I don't know the answer to this question.
I could see something with Loam and KotR. Traverse lets you tutor for any creature OR land if delirium is active. Something something maverick with both GSZ creature tutor targets as well as land targets...without having to run Crop Rotation? Eh.
Entomb keeps the third color open but Gift's Ungiven or Intuition can turn it on as well. Intuition for something like Courser, Strix, Eternal Witness gives you types as well as some guaranteed CA. It's even blue if you wanted FoW in the SB.
I think the problem with this sort of BUG build is that there's not a good 4-5 drop we can GSZ for. I'm still not won over on Gitrog Monster, for 5 I want something that's either unkillable or generates advantage on cast and through remaining on the board. The closest seems to be Thragtusk.
Delirium is really just a tutor, if it's anything like Modern simply tutoring something after going through hoops isn't good enough, you have to be able to chain them. In my Modern deck I go Traverse for Snap, Snap/Traverse for Huntmaster followed by Huntmaster of the Fells on the next turn. You can do something similar using Eternal Witness.
TX - Traverse for Witness, cast Witness, Traverse for Deadeye Navigator (1GGGG spent)
TX+1 - Deadeye Navigator, soulbond to Witness, hold up activation, get Traverse back with Witness (5UUU spent)
It seems powerful but the difference in mana spent between the two turns is pretty large, I'm not sure it could curve properly since it needs 8 mana.
Followup to the above idea, I think the Deadeye Navigator plan is too much mana. What isn't too much mana though is
Entomb to turn on Traverse
Traverse for Witness
Witness back Traverse
Traverse for Restoration Angel
Blink Witness, return Traverse
Traverse for something (Monastery Mentor maybe?)
What I like about this plan is that Traverse lends itself to running a lighter creature deck because you need the other card types, and to go back to the Baneslayer/Mulldrifter creature types, Restoration Angel favors a deck of Mulldrifters which are the better creature type when you're spell heavy. With 4 Tops I could see trying to work in the Monastery Mentor combo as well as another finisher that we can tutor off Traverse. Thoughts? Is it just worse than using GSZ?
Traverse for Witness
Traverse for Meren
loop Traverse every turn for whatever you want, just need a sac outlet
Birthing Pod Witness -> Meren is similar.
Maybe, but it needs the opponent to be lacking in GY hate and it needs Meren to stay on the table. What I like about the Witness/Resto loop is that either part can die and the Traverse you grabbed on the previous iteration reestablishes the loop. If they kill Witness the Traverse gets another Witness, which then gets back Traverse for a Resto and brings out more guys. If they kill the Resto the flicker still happened and you get the Traverse. The only thing that actually disrupts it is eating the Traverse, which is still vulnerable to DRS/Ooze, but that's a little less vulnerable than Meren. With enough mana you could in theory loop twice in a turn as well (Resto (4), flicker Witness, cast Traverse (5), get Resto, cast Resto (9), flicker Witness, get Traverse).
Last edited by Brael; 05-17-2016 at 08:19 PM.
And the famed triple post. Looking at Restoration Angel as my 4 drop here, and limited to no GSZ. I really like the idea of Tidehollow Sculler here (which I've been experimenting with anyways) because it's an Artifact+Creature for Delirium, and it has strong interactions with Restoration Angel. That puts my colors pretty solidly into the usual Junk builds. It also means that I'm less interested in creatures without an immediate impact so I don't think this is a Tracker build and I probably want a lower creature count than I usually play.
I'm also thinking that Entomb may not be where I want to be, Entomb is a do nothing card, I would rather turn Traverse on through card choices than investing more cards.
Land 22
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Vault of the Archangel
2 Bayou
1 Scrubland
1 Savanah
2 Forest
2 Plains
1 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath
2 Marsh Flats
Creatures 18
4 Veteran Explorer
2 Deathrite Shaman
3 Tidehollow Sculler
1 Courser of Kruphix
3 Eternal Witness
4 Restoration Angel
1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
Spells 16
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
1 Vindicate
1 Anguished Unmaking
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Path to Exile
Artifact 4
4 Sensei's Divining Top
This doesn't work the Mentors in though. Not quite sure how to do that, but I do like the concept.
Diabolic Intent is one of the coolest sac outlets ever... Even lets you establish the Eternal Witness + Meren + Phyrexian Tower loop out of the blue.
Nothing like cabal therapying yourself to discard a rhino against your reanimator opponent who is at 3.
Current Build: Punishing Rhinos http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post927726
I find that's very strange how pod is being ignored in this thread, in spite of the fact that the biggest results in the Last 2 years have been collected by pod versions. Someone could explain it to me?
It doesn't run Siege Rhino. We really, really like Siege Rhino.
In all seriousness, Pod lists tend to durdle a lot without killing the opponent. Junk Fit is a lot quicker to go for the throat.
Junk pod always runs Rhino.
I mean, results have shown pretty clearly that pod (and ramp/valakut after them) are the best version of nic fit in the last 2 years, and the last results have confirmed that.
So I'm wondering why there is so few talk about it
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