Yeah for sure humans has something going for it that no other tribe does in quite the same way - new cards in nearly every set. Lots of brew potential.
That said, in the interests of competitive brews(the point of this thread) It's worth highlighting directions and choices which go against the gameplan, are anti-synergistic to the cards in the tribe or generally somehow read the landscape in a way which needs improvement.
Paths and discard, for example. Let's examine the kinds of decks which pack this sort of 1-for-1 interaction in the maindeck (not necessarily these exact cards but this type of effect):
Jund
Junk
UW control
Jeskai control
Grixis control
Delver (all variants)
8rack
BW tokens
Now let's examine why;
Each of these decks has a swathe of 1-for-1 effects that trade cards in your hand for cards in your opponent's hand (or battlefield). By itself this is a bad strategy. They only have to play one unanswered threat to win, and trading cards in this way will force you and an opponent into topdeck wars very quickly! Also, every turn you spend casting these spells is a turn not winning or pressuring your opponent into a corner.
But look closer at the other cards these decks include. Difficult to deal with threats, massive 2-or-3-for-1s, card draw engines, manlands. These decks are designed to explicitly pivot and capitalise around those discard and spot removal spells to win the grindy game and destroy any topdeck war. Most of their cards are worth *more* than a card.
These decks don't want those disruptive elements because they can't capitalise on them. These decks rely on a critical mass of threats and don't win topdeck wars, their individual pieces are too small and reliant on synergy.
There are times when (as mentioned previously) you'll want to upset a combo opponent with thoughtseize out of the sideboard, elves and affinity do this rather well. But your main strategy should always be to max out on threats because you basically want to win evert game with the top 10 or 11 cards in your library. If it goes on any longer you've (probably) lost, and I can see from your match breakdown above that there are instances where if we replaced those interaction pieces with threats, you'd have posed a much harder question for your opponents to answer than if you were picking off things with discard.
All that said, I'm not in any position to tell you that you're "doing it wrong" just that there are other things to consider. I myself will have missed and neglected certain aspects of my play and deckbuilding - we all do, let's be real.
Critically, if you find something that works consistently for your personal metagame, that's awesome. In a way, that's what we're all looking for at various scales large and small. I would say though that just on a basic level, try to max on threats in the mainboard in order to keep the ratio of threats-per-card-drawn as high as you can. If your first 10 cards drawn contain 3 interaction spells, you rely so much more on those 3 or 4 threats you've drawn to survive that winning becomes something lucky rather than something by-design. Remember most grindy decks pack in the region of 6-9 removal spells and you can expect an opponent to draw a couple early. Overwhelming an opponent's removal (especially with cards like thalia, meddling mage and freebooter) is so much easier when you have a critical mass. If you only have one of those pieces you'll constantly be on the back foot and hoping your opponent "doesn't have it". With all the pieces it might not even matter if they did!
Case in point:
You're on the play. Opponent sees more or less what you're up to and decides on their second turn to serum visions to find a sweeper, holding open one land to cast their fatal push. They scry to the top, presumably finding what they want. Your third turn, you drop thalia v1 and your opponent suddenly wasted their open mana (or are forced to use it immediately and not as profitably as they otherwise would). If you followed this up with a vialled in freebooter in their draw step you've suddenly put the screws on and also potentially nullified the scry they made with their serum visions. At that point their options become more limited. They either trade down removing thalia (unlikely if you got to resolve freebooter's ability) or they drop a threat of their own. If they choose the second, you likely win this exchange because your deck is *entirely* threats and ways to pump them up. You've forced your opponent into a corner in a way that interactions spells wouldn't have ever done. If you'd thoughtseized them, they'd have their scryed topdeck and plenty of time to find answers, you aren't putting much pressure on so their threats would be more impactful against you and you've let them dictate the pace of the game.
It's just one example. There will be specific lines of course where thoughtseize would help ypu win a game, but in aggregate a deck like this wants to go full-ham on pressuring the opponent forcing them down worse lines of play.
@smaug
I'm going to criticise your deck choice in the following paragraphs. Please don't take this the wrong way, every decklist has its faults so I'm hoping this can be a nucleus for discussion and also for improvement. Hope you don't mind!
Here we go:
I feel like the hybrid list you're running makes the "humans" part of the deck less worthwhile. You're essentially building it like an abzan midrange deck but then relying on smaller, synergy-reliant creatures to get you there (instead of bigger less synergistic creatures like goyf, angler and tasigur). Also, maybe it's just me but your creature count for coco seems a little on the low side. This could make you 'whiff' more than you'd really want or expect.
The more control-ish elements you include, the more you detract from the tempo/fish strategy that a tribe like humans invokes. I can see you've already had to drop thalia 1.0 from your list because of the number of noncreature spells you're running. She's a fairly important piece of the puzzle.
The 'abzan midrange' element of your deck is also rather half-baked because you've included a few of the core elements but not enough of them to actually execute the midrange gameplan.
...
Essentially I'm saying that you've built a deck of two halves, and those halves probably don't go together. There is probably a world where you could (like affinity sometimes does) side in a couple thoughtseize/inquisition from the board, maybe, against fragile combo decks. Mainboard though doesn't make a lot of sense and you've had to drop some of the most important creatures in the deck in order to accommodate those spells.
This part deserves repeating. I'm not a very dedicated Humans player, but I've dabbled in a few lists; mostly I've tried to turn it into Abzan or Esper lists that run more removal/discard elements (because I'm a midrange player at heart). Don't do that. Speaking from experience, it makes the deck much, much worse. Playing two halves of two different decks makes you a bad Humans deck and a bad midrange deck.
Pascal Maynard video with 5c vial humans. I only watched the first match, a loss to dredge, because I don't have vials and am not that interested. Hopefully somebody will find it valuable.
Pascal Maynard video with 5c vial humans. I only watched the first match, a loss to dredge, because I don't have vials and am not that interested. Hopefully somebody will find it valuable.
I think the most interesting thing he said is that maybe the Collected Company Humans is better.
He ran into Dredge the first 2 matches, then the mirror, Jeskai Queller, and Storm. He was 3-2 or 2-3? Got flooded a lot.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Pascal Maynard video with 5c vial humans. I only watched the first match, a loss to dredge, because I don't have vials and am not that interested. Hopefully somebody will find it valuable.
I think the most interesting thing he said is that maybe the Collected Company Humans is better.
He ran into Dredge the first 2 matches, then the mirror, Jeskai Queller, and Storm. He was 3-2 or 2-3? Got flooded a lot.
what's interesting is that he also did the 'bad pro' thing which is to say; pick up something different, play it poorly and then fall back on saying "well my version's better".
he didn't play it well. made some odd choices. one particular line was interesting where he actually said out-loud the best possible line (pretty smart!) and then completely ignored it for some reason, losing him the game quite convincingly.
his comment about CoCo was unhelpful. it doesn't amount to a reasonable comparison or analysis, just his gut feeling after messing up his plays somewhat.
like - i get that. i've traded out of entire decks before because i had a poor run with them. I can understand the mentality there completely I just don't think it should apply to the actual conversation on whether either version is viable.
Finally got the deck put together and I've got my first tournament with the deck tonight. Was wondering if anyone had a fairly comprehensive guide for what to name for meddling Mage depending on the match up. A hierarchical list would be quite helpful!
I know for storm naming, grapeshot game one is almost a free win. Almost since most are main boarding bolt now, but what about in other match ups where they have less of a clear win con? Match ups like GDS, burn, or uwr control. Also match ups where they might be able to get their threats out before mage, like affinity.
I dont have a list, but when I'm not sure what to name I just kitesail first to get information. I also find that with decks like control and burn, rather than just naming their "win con", it's better to pick the cards that will stop me from winning (mainly removal and sweepers).
Interesting historical view of Humans deck development on mtggoldfish. I found it interesting for relevant perspective, at least.
If people don't like me dropping these links because they seem spammy, please let me know. I can stop. I am getting the remaining Nobles, but I don't have Vials, old Thalia, Mayor or Meddling Mages, so I won't even be running a competitive version when the Nobles arrive.
M_witte, and headminerve, thanks for the links, and write up respectively. They definitely helped out quite a bit. Unfortunately I scrubbed out and went 2-2. I definitely felt like I had a good fighting chance in all of my matches though, and managed to go at least 1-2 in my two losses. My matches were abzan (1-2), bant eldrazi (2-1), eldrazi Tron (1-2), and GDS (2-0).
One problem I ran into though was what do you do when you freebooter someone and they have three kill spells? For example say you have freebooter and meddling Mage, and your opponent has push, path, and engineered explosives. Assuming it's turn two and your opponent isn't screwed on Mana, what do you take with kitesail and what do you name with mage, or is there just no way out?
One problem I ran into though was what do you do when you freebooter someone and they have three kill spells?
You take the spell that costs the least mana. What you get in return is the info on your opp's hand and he's gonna have to spend a turn getting back his/her stuff. The hard part is how to sequence your own spells once you know about the kill spells.
Has anyone thought about adding Shapers Sanctuary x3 or x4? Or in SB for G2/3?
It's an option. I think I mostly prefer proactive plays in this archetype overall, so if a Human can draw me cards, I'll play it over an enchantment.
Besides, I'm not sure you want to somewhat protect your creatures, they're all expandable at some degree. What MUs do you want them in, and what do you cut in your SB ?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Pioneer - A bunch of stuff Modern - Humans Legacy - Grixis Phoenix / Death & Taxes
It's an interesting idea. I know some Infect builds that have been playing 2 Shaper's Sanctuary in their board versus attrition matchups.
My biggest concern is the manabase. It is very difficult to cast non-creature spells in this deck. For example, there are only 8 green sources of mana in my build, of which 4 are Noble Hierarch!
That's not to say that the idea is without merit. We would just need to change around the manabase -- possibly cut some Ancient Ziggurats and fastlands, add some fetches.
@Octa-bit
For example say you have freebooter and meddling Mage, and your opponent has push, path, and engineered explosives.
For what it's worth, I've been thinking about adding a second Sin Collector to my sideboard to handle this issue.
This is actually a really great example to go over. First, it's important to realize that you're not going to be able to keep themoff of killing both of these creatures and having a removal spell left over if they plays perfectly. Second, while there aren't any great lines for us, there is one awful line to avoid: we don't want both our Freebooter and Mage to get killed with the EE.
We want to induce bad plays by our opponents, and we want our opponent to end up with the worst removal spell. Since we're playing versus Junk, we want that spell to be Fatal Push. First, our opponent might not be able to trigger Revolt later, so it might be dead versus Mantis Riders. Second, if this is a post-board game, Push doesn't kill Mirran Crusader at all. Third, maybe we want to get our Plains off the Path to Exile. Fourth, we want to get the EE out of their hand because it can potentially hit more than one of our creatures.
To make my example more clear, let's assume we have Freebooter, Mage, and a land in hand, with 4 mana available and a Vial on 2.
Here, I would cast Kitesail Freebooter first. Again, I want to induce my opponent into using their removal poorly. If my opponent kills Freebooter with the trigger on the stack, that is just fine. I would name the other instant speed removal spell with Meddling Mage to make him use Engineered Explosives on my Mage. Hopefully my opponent spend his entire next turn using the EE to kill the Meddling Mage. Of course, if their life total is high enough, they might just take a few hits first. EE on 2 to kill our Meddling Mage is a bit awkward for Junk, though, since they have Tarmogoyfs, Grim Flayers, and Scavenging Oozes.
If they let the Freebooter trigger resolve, I'd probably take the Fatal Push. I'd then cast Meddling Mage. If we're able to convince our opponent that our third card in hand was another Freebooter or Meddling Mage, they might fire off the Path to kill the Freebooter with Mage on the stack. If so, we just name Fatal Push. If they don't fire off the Path, I would name Engineered Explosives. They would be left with a Path to Exile as their only removal spell. In this spot, they'd get to choose whether they end up with Engineered Explosives or Fatal Push as their final removal spell (since they could Path either the Mage or the Freebooter, getting back the EE or Push respectively).
Again, if our opponent plays perfectly, they would be able to pick the EE or the Push as the spell the end up with after killing both our creatures, depending on what they draw next turn. If they are a higher life total, they probably want to get the EE back since it has the upside of potentially hitting two creatures, even though it is less efficient of a removal spell. The point, though, is to create several decision points that gives our opponent the opportunity to play poorly. In the situations I described above, there were at least two situations where our opponent would play suboptimally (e.g., killing Freebooter with trigger on the stack or killing Freebooter with Meddling Mage on the stack).
I've been really liking 2 Dark confidants in the main and 2 in the side for the grindy/removal heavy matches. But I love playing the card, so I'm very heavily biased.
The problem I have running Bob in those removal heavy match ups is that he generally just gets, well, removed. I know having a lightning rod for removal isn't necessarily the worst thing, but at the same time if we drew something other than Bob, that would be the target being removed instead. In either case our opponent is using their removal spell and we're losing a card without gaining any card advantage from it.
I like shapers sanctuary not because it protects are creatures, but because it makes our opponents spells less efficient. They go from trading one for one to essentially being minus one card while we effectively maintain parity. Thats a bit of an oversimplified explanation, since we lose a specific card. However on a pure card-to-card level it works.
The problem with shapers sanctuary is that it is significantly hard for us to cast than any human option. In order to reliably cast it turn one we need 14 green sources, and both Noble and reflecting pool won't work turn one. Beyond turn one it becomes easier but then it runs the risk of being disrupted. I think it's definitely worth looking into though.
Sorry, I wasn't particularly eloquent with how I described it. I ment to say that as long as we play a threat in a removal heavy match our opponent is going to attempt to remove it before we gain some sort of benefit from it. Now we have plenty of threats such as Bob, but there are others such as mayor, meddling Mage, and mantis rider. All of these cards are threats and our opponent is going to try to stop us from gaining an advantage by using his removal in (generally) a one for one trade. The thing about these threats is that while they are all threats they are different types of threats.
Bob brings the threat of card advantage, but as a creature in a removal heavy match up it's rare he will live to be able to generate his advantage as he has little protection. However there are other ways to get card advantage without being open to removal.
And the big piece I missed out of my original post was linking shapers sanctuary to Bob. They both are a threat in terms of card advantage. However shapers has the caveat of not being a creature and thus getting around our opponents removal. It also has the added benefit of making our opponents removal significantly worse. While it doesn't give our creatures hard protection, it itself has a bit of protection against our opponents removal, as enchantment hate is fairly rare right now. Especially in the matches with significant amounts of removal, such as GDS, BGx, and UWx control. Burn is another one however they generally run destructive revelry. It would be unlikely they would board that in against a creature based aggro deck.
Hopefully I made it a bit clearer. Although maybe I missed the original point I was going for as well. This is what happens when you try to post at work and you're trying to type it up over the course of a number of breaks.
Yeah for sure humans has something going for it that no other tribe does in quite the same way - new cards in nearly every set. Lots of brew potential.
That said, in the interests of competitive brews(the point of this thread) It's worth highlighting directions and choices which go against the gameplan, are anti-synergistic to the cards in the tribe or generally somehow read the landscape in a way which needs improvement.
Paths and discard, for example. Let's examine the kinds of decks which pack this sort of 1-for-1 interaction in the maindeck (not necessarily these exact cards but this type of effect):
Jund
Junk
UW control
Jeskai control
Grixis control
Delver (all variants)
8rack
BW tokens
Now let's examine why;
Each of these decks has a swathe of 1-for-1 effects that trade cards in your hand for cards in your opponent's hand (or battlefield). By itself this is a bad strategy. They only have to play one unanswered threat to win, and trading cards in this way will force you and an opponent into topdeck wars very quickly! Also, every turn you spend casting these spells is a turn not winning or pressuring your opponent into a corner.
But look closer at the other cards these decks include. Difficult to deal with threats, massive 2-or-3-for-1s, card draw engines, manlands. These decks are designed to explicitly pivot and capitalise around those discard and spot removal spells to win the grindy game and destroy any topdeck war. Most of their cards are worth *more* than a card.
Now let's compare:
Merfolk
Elves
Slivers
(humans)
Affinity
Infect
Stompy
Zoo
These decks don't want those disruptive elements because they can't capitalise on them. These decks rely on a critical mass of threats and don't win topdeck wars, their individual pieces are too small and reliant on synergy.
There are times when (as mentioned previously) you'll want to upset a combo opponent with thoughtseize out of the sideboard, elves and affinity do this rather well. But your main strategy should always be to max out on threats because you basically want to win evert game with the top 10 or 11 cards in your library. If it goes on any longer you've (probably) lost, and I can see from your match breakdown above that there are instances where if we replaced those interaction pieces with threats, you'd have posed a much harder question for your opponents to answer than if you were picking off things with discard.
All that said, I'm not in any position to tell you that you're "doing it wrong" just that there are other things to consider. I myself will have missed and neglected certain aspects of my play and deckbuilding - we all do, let's be real.
Critically, if you find something that works consistently for your personal metagame, that's awesome. In a way, that's what we're all looking for at various scales large and small. I would say though that just on a basic level, try to max on threats in the mainboard in order to keep the ratio of threats-per-card-drawn as high as you can. If your first 10 cards drawn contain 3 interaction spells, you rely so much more on those 3 or 4 threats you've drawn to survive that winning becomes something lucky rather than something by-design. Remember most grindy decks pack in the region of 6-9 removal spells and you can expect an opponent to draw a couple early. Overwhelming an opponent's removal (especially with cards like thalia, meddling mage and freebooter) is so much easier when you have a critical mass. If you only have one of those pieces you'll constantly be on the back foot and hoping your opponent "doesn't have it". With all the pieces it might not even matter if they did!
Case in point:
You're on the play. Opponent sees more or less what you're up to and decides on their second turn to serum visions to find a sweeper, holding open one land to cast their fatal push. They scry to the top, presumably finding what they want. Your third turn, you drop thalia v1 and your opponent suddenly wasted their open mana (or are forced to use it immediately and not as profitably as they otherwise would). If you followed this up with a vialled in freebooter in their draw step you've suddenly put the screws on and also potentially nullified the scry they made with their serum visions. At that point their options become more limited. They either trade down removing thalia (unlikely if you got to resolve freebooter's ability) or they drop a threat of their own. If they choose the second, you likely win this exchange because your deck is *entirely* threats and ways to pump them up. You've forced your opponent into a corner in a way that interactions spells wouldn't have ever done. If you'd thoughtseized them, they'd have their scryed topdeck and plenty of time to find answers, you aren't putting much pressure on so their threats would be more impactful against you and you've let them dictate the pace of the game.
It's just one example. There will be specific lines of course where thoughtseize would help ypu win a game, but in aggregate a deck like this wants to go full-ham on pressuring the opponent forcing them down worse lines of play.
Also, mantis rider is *lit*
This part deserves repeating. I'm not a very dedicated Humans player, but I've dabbled in a few lists; mostly I've tried to turn it into Abzan or Esper lists that run more removal/discard elements (because I'm a midrange player at heart). Don't do that. Speaking from experience, it makes the deck much, much worse. Playing two halves of two different decks makes you a bad Humans deck and a bad midrange deck.
RNA Standard: Grixis Midrange, Jund Deathwhirler, Sultai Vannifar
GRN Standard: Red Midrange, Mono-Blue Tempo, Wr Aggro, Gruul Experimental Dinosaurs, Sultai Midrange, Jeskai Midrange
Modern: Bant Spirits
Forcing a single archetype in all formats: too many colors, bad mana.
I think the most interesting thing he said is that maybe the Collected Company Humans is better.
He ran into Dredge the first 2 matches, then the mirror, Jeskai Queller, and Storm. He was 3-2 or 2-3? Got flooded a lot.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)what's interesting is that he also did the 'bad pro' thing which is to say; pick up something different, play it poorly and then fall back on saying "well my version's better".
he didn't play it well. made some odd choices. one particular line was interesting where he actually said out-loud the best possible line (pretty smart!) and then completely ignored it for some reason, losing him the game quite convincingly.
his comment about CoCo was unhelpful. it doesn't amount to a reasonable comparison or analysis, just his gut feeling after messing up his plays somewhat.
like - i get that. i've traded out of entire decks before because i had a poor run with them. I can understand the mentality there completely I just don't think it should apply to the actual conversation on whether either version is viable.
I know for storm naming, grapeshot game one is almost a free win. Almost since most are main boarding bolt now, but what about in other match ups where they have less of a clear win con? Match ups like GDS, burn, or uwr control. Also match ups where they might be able to get their threats out before mage, like affinity.
If people don't like me dropping these links because they seem spammy, please let me know. I can stop. I am getting the remaining Nobles, but I don't have Vials, old Thalia, Mayor or Meddling Mages, so I won't even be running a competitive version when the Nobles arrive.
RNA Standard: Grixis Midrange, Jund Deathwhirler, Sultai Vannifar
GRN Standard: Red Midrange, Mono-Blue Tempo, Wr Aggro, Gruul Experimental Dinosaurs, Sultai Midrange, Jeskai Midrange
Modern: Bant Spirits
Forcing a single archetype in all formats: too many colors, bad mana.
My top priorities G1 are :
Abzan : situational
Ad Naus : Ad Nauseam
Affinity : Cranial Plating, Etched Champion
Bogles : Daybreak Coronet
Burn : Searing Blaze, Rift Bolt when suspended
Cheerios : Retract
Copycat : Felidar Guardian
Death's Shadow : situational
Dredge : Conflagrate
Eldrazi Bant : situational
Eldrazi Tron : All is Dust, Walking Ballista
Elves : Collected Company, Chord of Calling
Fish : Spreading Seas
Infect : situational
Jund : situational
Lantern : Ensnaring Bridge
Living End : Living End
Storm : Grapeshot
Tron : Oblivion Stone
UWx : Supreme Verdict, Path to Exile
Valakut : Primeval Titan, Scapeshift
Vizier Company : Collected Company, Chord of Calling, Vizier of Remedies.
Basically the cards I lose to.
Link here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/204846466
You guys are awesome
(I didn't have anything else to add, just that I'm thankful)
One problem I ran into though was what do you do when you freebooter someone and they have three kill spells? For example say you have freebooter and meddling Mage, and your opponent has push, path, and engineered explosives. Assuming it's turn two and your opponent isn't screwed on Mana, what do you take with kitesail and what do you name with mage, or is there just no way out?
You take the spell that costs the least mana. What you get in return is the info on your opp's hand and he's gonna have to spend a turn getting back his/her stuff. The hard part is how to sequence your own spells once you know about the kill spells.
It's an option. I think I mostly prefer proactive plays in this archetype overall, so if a Human can draw me cards, I'll play it over an enchantment.
Besides, I'm not sure you want to somewhat protect your creatures, they're all expandable at some degree. What MUs do you want them in, and what do you cut in your SB ?
It's an interesting idea. I know some Infect builds that have been playing 2 Shaper's Sanctuary in their board versus attrition matchups.
My biggest concern is the manabase. It is very difficult to cast non-creature spells in this deck. For example, there are only 8 green sources of mana in my build, of which 4 are Noble Hierarch!
That's not to say that the idea is without merit. We would just need to change around the manabase -- possibly cut some Ancient Ziggurats and fastlands, add some fetches.
@Octa-bit
For what it's worth, I've been thinking about adding a second Sin Collector to my sideboard to handle this issue.
This is actually a really great example to go over. First, it's important to realize that you're not going to be able to keep themoff of killing both of these creatures and having a removal spell left over if they plays perfectly. Second, while there aren't any great lines for us, there is one awful line to avoid: we don't want both our Freebooter and Mage to get killed with the EE.
We want to induce bad plays by our opponents, and we want our opponent to end up with the worst removal spell. Since we're playing versus Junk, we want that spell to be Fatal Push. First, our opponent might not be able to trigger Revolt later, so it might be dead versus Mantis Riders. Second, if this is a post-board game, Push doesn't kill Mirran Crusader at all. Third, maybe we want to get our Plains off the Path to Exile. Fourth, we want to get the EE out of their hand because it can potentially hit more than one of our creatures.
To make my example more clear, let's assume we have Freebooter, Mage, and a land in hand, with 4 mana available and a Vial on 2.
Here, I would cast Kitesail Freebooter first. Again, I want to induce my opponent into using their removal poorly. If my opponent kills Freebooter with the trigger on the stack, that is just fine. I would name the other instant speed removal spell with Meddling Mage to make him use Engineered Explosives on my Mage. Hopefully my opponent spend his entire next turn using the EE to kill the Meddling Mage. Of course, if their life total is high enough, they might just take a few hits first. EE on 2 to kill our Meddling Mage is a bit awkward for Junk, though, since they have Tarmogoyfs, Grim Flayers, and Scavenging Oozes.
If they let the Freebooter trigger resolve, I'd probably take the Fatal Push. I'd then cast Meddling Mage. If we're able to convince our opponent that our third card in hand was another Freebooter or Meddling Mage, they might fire off the Path to kill the Freebooter with Mage on the stack. If so, we just name Fatal Push. If they don't fire off the Path, I would name Engineered Explosives. They would be left with a Path to Exile as their only removal spell. In this spot, they'd get to choose whether they end up with Engineered Explosives or Fatal Push as their final removal spell (since they could Path either the Mage or the Freebooter, getting back the EE or Push respectively).
Again, if our opponent plays perfectly, they would be able to pick the EE or the Push as the spell the end up with after killing both our creatures, depending on what they draw next turn. If they are a higher life total, they probably want to get the EE back since it has the upside of potentially hitting two creatures, even though it is less efficient of a removal spell. The point, though, is to create several decision points that gives our opponent the opportunity to play poorly. In the situations I described above, there were at least two situations where our opponent would play suboptimally (e.g., killing Freebooter with trigger on the stack or killing Freebooter with Meddling Mage on the stack).
I like shapers sanctuary not because it protects are creatures, but because it makes our opponents spells less efficient. They go from trading one for one to essentially being minus one card while we effectively maintain parity. Thats a bit of an oversimplified explanation, since we lose a specific card. However on a pure card-to-card level it works.
The problem with shapers sanctuary is that it is significantly hard for us to cast than any human option. In order to reliably cast it turn one we need 14 green sources, and both Noble and reflecting pool won't work turn one. Beyond turn one it becomes easier but then it runs the risk of being disrupted. I think it's definitely worth looking into though.
Bob brings the threat of card advantage, but as a creature in a removal heavy match up it's rare he will live to be able to generate his advantage as he has little protection. However there are other ways to get card advantage without being open to removal.
And the big piece I missed out of my original post was linking shapers sanctuary to Bob. They both are a threat in terms of card advantage. However shapers has the caveat of not being a creature and thus getting around our opponents removal. It also has the added benefit of making our opponents removal significantly worse. While it doesn't give our creatures hard protection, it itself has a bit of protection against our opponents removal, as enchantment hate is fairly rare right now. Especially in the matches with significant amounts of removal, such as GDS, BGx, and UWx control. Burn is another one however they generally run destructive revelry. It would be unlikely they would board that in against a creature based aggro deck.
Hopefully I made it a bit clearer. Although maybe I missed the original point I was going for as well. This is what happens when you try to post at work and you're trying to type it up over the course of a number of breaks.
MTGO/MTGA: Tyclone
My Primers ~ GWx Vizier Company ~ Knightfall ~ RG Eldrazi ~ Green's Sun's Zenith
More Brews ~ Modern Four Horsemen ~ Gitrog Dredge