He's playing a more controlling version, without Goyfs/Knights and with main board 2x Unburial Rites, 2x Sylvan, 1x Slaughter Pact, 2x Mana Leak and Iona. Everything else is pretty standard.
Yeah, I play 8rack and I know exactly what a t2 Wrench mind does. But yet, even with Wrenchmind, 8 targeted discard, and a monocoloured mana base that deals 0 damage to you, that deck still has a poor matchup against burn.
8Racks problems with burn don't stem from its discard though. Making burn discard two is awesome even if the rest of your deck is poorly positioned to clock them down before they count to 20.
She only doesn't have a way to protect herself because you're reading the card too literally. She won't be played in a deck without a way to dramatically impact the board immediately. This could be through a T5-play with rebounded removal, a T5 play following a wrath, or a T4 play into 4-5 power with a wrath or removal in hand to rebound next turn, giving you two turns where the opponent can't play creatures.
Now I do make an assumption: you're holding some kind of impactful removal. Because if you're control and you have no removal against aggro, there isn't a single planeswalker that will save you against the aggro decks in their respective formats. But that's not the point of planeswalkers, especially in control. People aren't playing Jace for his sweet bounce ability. They play him to brainstorm and draw cards because the usual problem control has is that they're great at 1 for 1ing but against stuff like Rhino and Finks, you'll eventually get out valued. Even Liliana is a mediocre answer against a good aggro start. T3 Liliana into their T1 birds fueled hand dump is not that good.
Tarset prevents you from getting gassed. She protects herself by giving you, the control player whose deck is mono impactful spells, the tools to help protect her.
Yes I agree. It seems to me that she can provide Control decks a good CA, which is what Control deck misses for a long time. My only concern is against various aggro or combo decks, her CA is not good enough to keep Control decks alive (stop your opponent) after turn 4...
I mean, that's not why you'd play her though. She's not a Wrath of God or a counterspell, she's a resilient card advantage engine that, at the very worst, says "Gain 7 life" if shes dealt with. You hopefully play other cards in your control deck that will stop your opponent after turn 4. She just helps you draw into them when you can find an opening to throw this down.
Against aggro for example, you'll probably play her on T5 most of the time, after spending removal or a sweeper on T4, Pathing, Dismembering, or Murderous Cutting whatever they played last turn with your one remaining mana. Now you have another Path on the rebound to basically timewalk them from playing creatures. The best part of this scenario is that it's pretty reasonable.
Gerard Fabiano confirmed the thoughts a lot of had on here with his result: control's a lot more powerful when you can back up your control with 4/5s. I wonder if there's any tech in there we can use. The planeswalkers are interesting, I remember one of the guys here was testing Ashiok in his list a few weeks back.
I agree the 4c is a little dubious. I hate stretching the mana base so far, especially when burn and Blood Moon is floating around. I think the strengths of the list I'm proposing come from the fact that Gifts is a ramp spell, a threat, and utility. In terms of Nic Fit, which I view as a disruptive ramp deck that goes over the top, Gifts plays toward that game plan.
I think Gifts can work in a Nic Fit shell because it 'ramps' you into Nic Fit's trademark fat things, whether its by fetching lands with PT (its like a Veteran Explorer!) or just straight up reanimating them.
Gifting for Prime Time when not under pressure gets you to six mana, enough to cast anything in your deck.
At the same time, Elesh Norn is a strong play against little things.dec helping slow down infect, affinity and Little Junk. She hits the board in a way no other fatty really does. You could potentially play other fatties too and the nice thing about doing it in a Nic Fit shell is that you can realistically cast your fatty if you end up drawing it.
The Academy Ruins/Wurmcoil Engine, Loam+Tarpit, and Gavony Township means we can grind out games and go over the top (it's possible three ways to do this are too many and the artifact part should be cut).
When the deck doesn't draw gifts, I'm trying to get it to do its best impression of Junk with stronger late game threats although much less disruption. I also want to fit 1-2 Tasigur into the list too.
I'm not saying this is the end all be all - I haven't even gotten the chance to test my list yet! But I think it's a valid line of deck building to consider for Nic Fit so I thought I'd share it here.
I'm not convinced you know what you're talking about because the deck I outlined plays nothing like current 4c Gifts Decks - not the midrange deck championed by Butakov or the straight control list that took 10th in a recent SCG event.
My take on Nic Fit. The entire deck is theory craft right now but the idea is you have the option of ramping to Gifts for:
1. More ramp (Rites/Primetime)
2. Stabilizing the board (Rites/Norn)
3. Loam Package to break apart control (Loam/Crime/Urborg/Tech-Edge or Lingering Souls)
4. Academy Ruins package as a finisher
5. Rites-Thrag to stabilize against burn
Ramping into fat things is fine to. The one big issue with this deck (and the archetype in general) is consistency. We don't have SDT to smooth our draws. In theory, Liliana might help with this but I have a feeling it's not as good as I think it is in practice.
Seems like it could be sweet. There's combo potential between Cobra and Sakura Tribe elder into a T4 6-drop (although its very possible Cobra should just be Carytid). Gifts grabs Prime Time which we can use to ramp ourselves into hard casting big fat dudes.
We take the Nic Fit approach of just being bigger than everything else in the format (except Emrakul). End game looks like Academy Ruins chaining Wurmcoils and circumstantial life gain off Finks/Rhino/Thragtusk/Soul-chumps will get you there against aggro. Your stuff being bigger than their stuff should help with midrange. Loam-Crime is the old standby against Control.
I really want to add some discard for combo (Splintertwin, basically). 4 Decay and 2 Path isn't awful though.
Just kidding, but seriously, what are the advantages of Squadron Hawk over Lingering Souls? Even just the front half of lingering souls is like two squadron hawks for 1.5 W each.
Using them as shuffle effects doesn't seem worth it with just two serum visions.
I don't play UWR Midrange but I was curious and came over to see what's up. Renwotac, I like the look of your deck a lot.
Personally, I'd lean toward maybe a 4th PtE, cutting an electrolyze. From my experience, electrolyze only matches up really well against Lingering Souls at the moment. You have a lot of 3-mana cards (Blade Splicer/Electro/Lingering Souls) and I think being able to just straight up kill something, especially against creature-combo decks, is very valuable. Terminate, Dismember or Murderous Cut are possible substitutes if you're afraid of making Remand worse by playing another Path.
I would also consider going down to 3 Colonnades, +1 fetchland. That might be a matter of personal taste. My thinking is it reduces the chance of awkward draws and you usually only want to see 1 Colonnade a game. It's unusual to be able to animate multiple Colonnades so once you have the first one, barring tech-edge, the others become less valuable.
Edit: Junk lists also usually only play 3 manlands (some combination of treetops and stirring wildwood)
Speaking of sideboard, some Junk lists have Fulminator Mage in their sideboard. No clue if that's relevant for your deck at all.
Having a Kiki-Jiki tucked somewhere could be funny.
You could accept his advice, and review your list, or counter with actually good arguments instead of arguing that your list is good because you've never lost against a resolved blood moon.
--
Worse than that, your argument in both of those things were "i've never lost a match against X so i don't care about what you said" - this is not a good argument.
Isn't empirical testing the best argument for anything? I feel like I'm hearing something like,
"I made an airplane, it flies."
"Nope, gravity makes things stay on the ground. Stop flying airplanes. It doesn't work."
"Yeah, but the airplane flies. I flew it last week. I've been recording my flights. 8-0 on my airplane vs gravity."
"lol testing? Um, that's not an actually good argument. You showed me your airplane so now I can give you advice on how it really doesn't work despite your testing saying that it does. Accept my advice and stop flying airplanes."
--
If his deck is doing fine against Blood moon after testing, why are you asking him to change it without evidence that it needs to be changed? Like T1. Fetch an island. T2. Fetch a plains. T3. Bloodmoon -- guess the rest of your lands are mountains.
He doesn't run Cryptic either and the black's a light splash. I completely buy that the deck can handle bloodmoon. He also has Wear/Tear in the sideboard to bring in against it especially since the only deck that plays Bloodmoon is Twin. You're probably bringing in Wear and Tear anyway against them. In addition, Twin is 4% of the meta. The recent PT victory may cause an upsurge in Twin decks but if they're copy catting off the winning deck, they'll have Bloodmoon in the sideboard. After side boarding, you'll be playing around Moon and have Wear//Tear in so yeah,
all of these things considered, plus his testing, I can see the other side of the argument.
Well then we should stop using her as a comparison. No planeswalker has been printed at rare.
You're the internet hero that we've been waiting for.
Even Liliana, a mythic with multi-format applications, barely broke $35 following the printing of Abrupt Decay and DRS.
Also, I cited Snapcaster for comparison. It's weird that if you find the comparison to Lili irrelevant, why you focus on that instead of the comparison with Snapcaster, which matches Tasigur in rarity. We're trying to determine a likely price for Tasigur, not pick on technicalities, correct? If you believe that my comparison with Lili invalidates my argument, also supported by Snapcaster, that it's unlikely for Tasigur to go to $30-$50, please elaborate.
I agree with Torpf's evaluation. If he does spike, his high will be around $20, probably falling slightly after. If he does go up in price, I'm guessing it won't be until after he rotates out of standard.
4 Siege Rhino
4 Kitchen Finks
2 Thragtusk
2 Tasigur
4 Abrupt Decay
2 Path to Exile
4 Discard
1 Lingering Souls
4 Gifts Ungiven
1 Loam
1 Crime
1 Unburial Rites
1 Griselbrand
1 Primeval Titan
1 Elesh Norn
3 Sylvan Caryatid
24 Lands
4 Basics
6 Shocks
9 Fetches
1 Urborg
1 Archangel's Vault
1 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Treetop Village
He's playing a more controlling version, without Goyfs/Knights and with main board 2x Unburial Rites, 2x Sylvan, 1x Slaughter Pact, 2x Mana Leak and Iona. Everything else is pretty standard.
8Racks problems with burn don't stem from its discard though. Making burn discard two is awesome even if the rest of your deck is poorly positioned to clock them down before they count to 20.
Now I do make an assumption: you're holding some kind of impactful removal. Because if you're control and you have no removal against aggro, there isn't a single planeswalker that will save you against the aggro decks in their respective formats. But that's not the point of planeswalkers, especially in control. People aren't playing Jace for his sweet bounce ability. They play him to brainstorm and draw cards because the usual problem control has is that they're great at 1 for 1ing but against stuff like Rhino and Finks, you'll eventually get out valued. Even Liliana is a mediocre answer against a good aggro start. T3 Liliana into their T1 birds fueled hand dump is not that good.
Tarset prevents you from getting gassed. She protects herself by giving you, the control player whose deck is mono impactful spells, the tools to help protect her.
EDIT: Hear, hear Lantern!
I mean, that's not why you'd play her though. She's not a Wrath of God or a counterspell, she's a resilient card advantage engine that, at the very worst, says "Gain 7 life" if shes dealt with. You hopefully play other cards in your control deck that will stop your opponent after turn 4. She just helps you draw into them when you can find an opening to throw this down.
Against aggro for example, you'll probably play her on T5 most of the time, after spending removal or a sweeper on T4, Pathing, Dismembering, or Murderous Cutting whatever they played last turn with your one remaining mana. Now you have another Path on the rebound to basically timewalk them from playing creatures. The best part of this scenario is that it's pretty reasonable.
I think Gifts can work in a Nic Fit shell because it 'ramps' you into Nic Fit's trademark fat things, whether its by fetching lands with PT (its like a Veteran Explorer!) or just straight up reanimating them.
Gifting for Prime Time when not under pressure gets you to six mana, enough to cast anything in your deck.
At the same time, Elesh Norn is a strong play against little things.dec helping slow down infect, affinity and Little Junk. She hits the board in a way no other fatty really does. You could potentially play other fatties too and the nice thing about doing it in a Nic Fit shell is that you can realistically cast your fatty if you end up drawing it.
The Academy Ruins/Wurmcoil Engine, Loam+Tarpit, and Gavony Township means we can grind out games and go over the top (it's possible three ways to do this are too many and the artifact part should be cut).
When the deck doesn't draw gifts, I'm trying to get it to do its best impression of Junk with stronger late game threats although much less disruption. I also want to fit 1-2 Tasigur into the list too.
I'm not saying this is the end all be all - I haven't even gotten the chance to test my list yet! But I think it's a valid line of deck building to consider for Nic Fit so I thought I'd share it here.
I'm not convinced you know what you're talking about because the deck I outlined plays nothing like current 4c Gifts Decks - not the midrange deck championed by Butakov or the straight control list that took 10th in a recent SCG event.
1. More ramp (Rites/Primetime)
2. Stabilizing the board (Rites/Norn)
3. Loam Package to break apart control (Loam/Crime/Urborg/Tech-Edge or Lingering Souls)
4. Academy Ruins package as a finisher
5. Rites-Thrag to stabilize against burn
Ramping into fat things is fine to. The one big issue with this deck (and the archetype in general) is consistency. We don't have SDT to smooth our draws. In theory, Liliana might help with this but I have a feeling it's not as good as I think it is in practice.
3 Sylvan Carytid
4 Birds of Paradise
Spells
4 Gifts Ungiven
2 Lingering Souls
4 Abrupt Decay
1 Engineered Explosives
Planeswalker
2 Liliana of the Veil //Possibly should just be removal, discard, or even ramp
The Dudes
3 Kitchen Finks
3 Siege Rhino
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Primeval Titan
2 Thragtusk
1 Elesh Norn
1 Courser of Kruphix
1 Life from the Loam
1 Raven's Crime
1 Unburial Rites
Lands (25 total: 4 basics, 11 fetches)
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Windswept Heath
1 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Plains
1 Academy Ruins
1 Tectonic Edge
3 Marsh Flats
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Watery Grave
1 Temple Garden
1 Godless Shrine
1 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Island
1 Gavony Township
4 Sylvan Carytid
3 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
3 Lotus Cobra
Spells
4 Gifts Ungiven
2 Lingering Souls
The Dudes
3 Kitchen Finks
3 Siege Rhino
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Batterskull
1 Primeval Titan
2 Thragtusk
1 Courser of Kruphinx // Possibly Elesh Norn
4 Abrupt Decay
2 Path to Exile
Ye Olde Package
1 Life from the Loam
1 Raven's Crime
1 Unburial Rites
Lands (5 basics, 10 fetches)
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Windswept Heath
2 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Plains
1 Academy Ruins
1 Tectonic Edge
2 Marsh Flats
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Watery Grave
1 Temple Garden
1 Godless Shrine
1 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Island
1 Gavony Township
Seems like it could be sweet. There's combo potential between Cobra and Sakura Tribe elder into a T4 6-drop (although its very possible Cobra should just be Carytid). Gifts grabs Prime Time which we can use to ramp ourselves into hard casting big fat dudes.
We take the Nic Fit approach of just being bigger than everything else in the format (except Emrakul). End game looks like Academy Ruins chaining Wurmcoils and circumstantial life gain off Finks/Rhino/Thragtusk/Soul-chumps will get you there against aggro. Your stuff being bigger than their stuff should help with midrange. Loam-Crime is the old standby against Control.
I really want to add some discard for combo (Splintertwin, basically). 4 Decay and 2 Path isn't awful though.
Just kidding, but seriously, what are the advantages of Squadron Hawk over Lingering Souls? Even just the front half of lingering souls is like two squadron hawks for 1.5 W each.
Using them as shuffle effects doesn't seem worth it with just two serum visions.
Personally, I'd lean toward maybe a 4th PtE, cutting an electrolyze. From my experience, electrolyze only matches up really well against Lingering Souls at the moment. You have a lot of 3-mana cards (Blade Splicer/Electro/Lingering Souls) and I think being able to just straight up kill something, especially against creature-combo decks, is very valuable. Terminate, Dismember or Murderous Cut are possible substitutes if you're afraid of making Remand worse by playing another Path.
I would also consider going down to 3 Colonnades, +1 fetchland. That might be a matter of personal taste. My thinking is it reduces the chance of awkward draws and you usually only want to see 1 Colonnade a game. It's unusual to be able to animate multiple Colonnades so once you have the first one, barring tech-edge, the others become less valuable.
Edit: Junk lists also usually only play 3 manlands (some combination of treetops and stirring wildwood)
Speaking of sideboard, some Junk lists have Fulminator Mage in their sideboard. No clue if that's relevant for your deck at all.
Having a Kiki-Jiki tucked somewhere could be funny.
Good luck with the PPT!
Isn't empirical testing the best argument for anything? I feel like I'm hearing something like,
"I made an airplane, it flies."
"Nope, gravity makes things stay on the ground. Stop flying airplanes. It doesn't work."
"Yeah, but the airplane flies. I flew it last week. I've been recording my flights. 8-0 on my airplane vs gravity."
"lol testing? Um, that's not an actually good argument. You showed me your airplane so now I can give you advice on how it really doesn't work despite your testing saying that it does. Accept my advice and stop flying airplanes."
--
If his deck is doing fine against Blood moon after testing, why are you asking him to change it without evidence that it needs to be changed? Like T1. Fetch an island. T2. Fetch a plains. T3. Bloodmoon -- guess the rest of your lands are mountains.
He doesn't run Cryptic either and the black's a light splash. I completely buy that the deck can handle bloodmoon. He also has Wear/Tear in the sideboard to bring in against it especially since the only deck that plays Bloodmoon is Twin. You're probably bringing in Wear and Tear anyway against them. In addition, Twin is 4% of the meta. The recent PT victory may cause an upsurge in Twin decks but if they're copy catting off the winning deck, they'll have Bloodmoon in the sideboard. After side boarding, you'll be playing around Moon and have Wear//Tear in so yeah,
all of these things considered, plus his testing, I can see the other side of the argument.
You're the internet hero that we've been waiting for.
Even Liliana, a mythic with multi-format applications, barely broke $35 following the printing of Abrupt Decay and DRS.
Also, I cited Snapcaster for comparison. It's weird that if you find the comparison to Lili irrelevant, why you focus on that instead of the comparison with Snapcaster, which matches Tasigur in rarity. We're trying to determine a likely price for Tasigur, not pick on technicalities, correct? If you believe that my comparison with Lili invalidates my argument, also supported by Snapcaster, that it's unlikely for Tasigur to go to $30-$50, please elaborate.
I agree with Torpf's evaluation. If he does spike, his high will be around $20, probably falling slightly after. If he does go up in price, I'm guessing it won't be until after he rotates out of standard.
That's true, but if Lili was printed at Rare, she probably won't have hit $30.