not gonna lie, i tried soul of ravnica in the board vs. jund monsters and would have left him there if it was good against anything else. zendi is bad, though. lilli and chain veil are too cute, even for me. i like cute, but i like my cuteness to be doing things to the board and interacting with stuff. this deck has a lot of potential to play an engaging and interactive, if not incredibly strong game against anything out there
So i can see against aggro decks we bring in 3x ashiok and 4x hornets nest, but what is worth dropping? Kiora maybe? (i dont want to drop her but maybe shes not too good in that matchup?)
Perilous Vault was one of the cards I opened at the pre-release and picked up a second copy of from a UR player after the event. I am running it over In Garruk's Wake right now, primarily because it allows me to sweep a board sooner against the midrange decks and it is mire playable against aggro than IGW is. Most decks are not packing artifact removal against us and it is too big for Abrupt Decay so it is pretty good at meeting a resolution. You can always untuck it from a Detention Sphere against control with an Abrupt Decay which makes this card something you can side in over AEtherspouts against Control to activate in a pinch.
My initial concern was that it will be nuking our walkers, but the draw-go approach makes this fairly less common since you are allowed to pick your spots for dropping a walker a bit more effectively.
So i can see against aggro decks we bring in 3x ashiok and 4x hornets nest, but what is worth dropping? Kiora maybe? (i dont want to drop her but maybe shes not too good in that matchup?)
You could leave in a Dissolve or two if you want, I may opt for keeping in Syncopate over Dissolve depending on how likely they are to be tapping down each turn. Honestly though, I would just move out all the counter and a single Garruk and if I wanted to get Vault into the mix, I would probably take out the 2nd Garruk and a Jace. Your strategy here would be to either take over with removal and Ashiok or max value out of Vault or Spouts so you can drop a Nissa or Kiora and start grinding them down.
While I am a fan of your list, I still want to hear your reasons for keeping Kiora while cutting Courser. They seem like a package deal to me, with Kiora's -1 becoming much worse without the support. Without courser, I'd be tempted to go back to Jace, Architect of Thought until rotation.
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While I am a fan of your list, I still want to hear your reasons for keeping Kiora while cutting Courser. They seem like a package deal to me, with Kiora's -1 becoming much worse without the support. Without courser, I'd be tempted to go back to Jace, Architect of Thought until rotation.
My reasons have not changed at all, I think I mentioned them a couple pages back.
Even with as much color fixing as we have right now, GG, BB, and UU is pretty demanding and it is hard to get there without shocking yourself a couple times just to make sure you could play T2 or 3 Courser, possibly have mana open for Heroes Downfall, and ultimately have a timely UU for AEtherspouts. It is just a lot to want to do in a short amount of turns and the color hungry cards offset any cushion your really have from Courser of Kruphix, where gaining life becomes relevant again in the later stages of the game - the problem with this is that it is a horribly body in the later stages of the game.
The idea was to give myself 2 primary colors to focus on, which were BB and UU which give me the necessary removal to help play a long game. Courser may be a phenomenal card, and I am not saying it is not, but Heroe Downfall and Dissolve have been your best options at 3CC if you want the game to go long and they have been since Theros. Courser is good at making the game go longer, but in a much different way. Having Kiora to help you sift through the top with library manipulation and Courser to pull off a second land in the event you do not hit your land drop is pretty nuts. But here is my initial question for you.
Exactly what are you ramping into with all of the excess land you are theoretically seeing?
The deck has Garruk at the top end, but let's be real - the format is slow enough where you do not need a whole lot of ramp to actually get the guy out and even on turn 6 the card is a complete bomb.
Bant even has something like Sphinx's Revelation which is something that scales with all of these excess land drops you are hitting with Kiora and Courser, and even those Bant lists do not run Courser of Kruphix.
Jace, Architect of Thought is an incredible draw engine, but he is hardly the same tool Kiora, the Crashing Wave is, and as much as I rarely use her +1, having access to that option is something Jace can not, and never will, do. If you are simply looking at both of them as draw engines, it may seem tempting to revert to Jace and leave Kiora out of it. I hardly believe that is the right way of evaluating the situation though. I have not looked back after removing Courser and I don't really intend to because the deck has just been running much more as I had expected since it's exclusion. Kiora is far from something I would contemplate cutting because unlike Courser, she is never a horrid top deck and she has a modular slot which is far more valuable when you are trying to play a control game.
I agree with Kamahl. In my playtesting without Courser, the deck runs much, much better in the first few turns. My deck is more tap out then Kamahl's is, but even as such, I can hit the mana sources I need when I need them easier then when I was running Courser.
Here's my current list that I'm toying with, sure to change before FNM.
I'm unsure if I will be keeping the Sphinx in the deck. It's tough with how much removal there is right now. I'm also beginning to think about moving Ashiok to the SB. Deathrite Shaman continues to just be great. I'm unsure the mix of cheap kill spells i want right now. I know there will be other Walker decks floating around in my local meta, but I'm unsure of how much aggro there will be.
I really like your "current" version of BUG however, because of the removal of Courser of Kruphix I found it necessary to drop a singleton of Back to Nature in the MB (for all those enchantments I wont be running). I also chose to go a little lighter on counterspells IE only 4 MD and 2 SB, this is just a personal preferance really, nothing wrong with more (Im still debating dropping down to two MB) but I digress -- here it is 8D
I still want to keep Aetherling in the deck because in all honesty its STILL the best finisher when splashing blue plain/simple. I do like the addition of Ultimate Price in the MB, I think with the direction of the "meta" this will serve the deck very well in the short-term. When the "rotation" happens, I am leaning (going on current information of course) towards 2x Bile Blight as a replacement.
---edit---
If Slivers become a thing, the 2x Bile Blight will become a "mandatory" switch imo.
Well yes I understand the potential, but I personally haven't had to face very many enchantments in play at once (Junk Blossoms is the only exception). Maybe you have different experience though. I was just thinking that maybe being able to remove a god or perhaps Scuttling Doom Engine without a destroy effect might be more useful in the MB, Back to Nature just feels very sideboardy to me.
I get what your saying, yes, it does lean more in the direction of SB. The main reason I am playing it MB is because of the vast number of "control" decks in my "meta." One has to consider all of them out there which are currently "playable" such as:
...the list can go on. The point im trying to make is there is A LOT of enchantments being played in standard right now. All of the above cards (or at least most of them anyway) have been used/played in tier one decks. So, in closing, I think the evidence above supports my claim that a "singleton" is a good idea 8D
I really like your "current" version of BUG however, because of the removal of Courser of Kruphix I found it necessary to drop a singleton of Back to Nature in the MB (for all those enchantments I wont be running). I also chose to go a little lighter on counterspells IE only 4 MD and 2 SB, this is just a personal preferance really, nothing wrong with more (Im still debating dropping down to two MB) but I digress -- here it is 8D
I don't quite understand the Back to Nature to be honest. Counterspells are probably better than BtN, not many decks run out multiple enchantments and the ones that do are still soft to AEtherspouts and other removal simply because most enchantments in the format are also creatures. The main exception to this is something like Detention Sphere, Banishing Light, Underworld Connections, or Gods, which leaves Abrupt Decay as an out to these types of enchantments. BtN seems like a strange card to be packing in the MB. It is not the same thing as Deicide is for white control decks because the decks use it as an out to Gods or the non-creature enchantments.
Just seems strange I guess.
I still want to keep Aetherling in the deck because in all honesty its STILL the best finisher when splashing blue plain/simple. I do like the addition of Ultimate Price in the MB, I think with the direction of the "meta" this will serve the deck very well in the short-term. When the "rotation" happens, I am leaning (going on current information of course) towards 2x Bile Blight as a replacement.
AEtherling seems fine in the MB. The only reason I am not running it is because I don't have any room and I don't feel the need to actually make room personally. All of your walkers are pretty good at ending a game if you stabilize, you could probably count Jace out of that I suppose, but it is not like the deck lacks any sort of threat density. What makes UBG so appealing in my eyes, is that your win conditions (walkers) are all good at controlling a board until you stabilize, where UW control decks have fewer walkers to accomplish this which lowers the threat density and makes AEtherling a pretty big role player. The ration of removal any given deck has against UW as opposed to UBG is larger.
If Slivers become a thing, the 2x Bile Blight will become a "mandatory" switch imo.
AEtherspouts can wreck them easily enough. Even if they get to a point where they are only attacking with 1 sliver to get around it, eventually Garruk will make chump blockers for days or Kiora will start locking down their options for attackers and Nissa will finally overwhelm them. They can't reasonably keep attacking into you with a single creature in hopes of winning the long game and if they attack with more than 1 they are susceptible to blow outs. Having Indestructibility does not mean a whole lot when your end game is no longer existent. There is also Hornet Nest and Perilous Vault out of the board which can provide you blockers for a fair period of time Vaults are answers to Sliver Hivelord.
I suppose killing a Whip of Erebos and a Underworld Connections in one go is pretty great, but I'm not sure i would prefer it over the power to kill a god (that started sounding good so i just went with it).
I don't think one is better than the other, but running redundancies to common scenarios is not all that great when the redundant cards become narrow and BtN and Unravel are both pretty narrow.
True it is a petty quarrel, and running something as a 1-of as an answer is something i try to avoid. Only 1-of's i like to run are good ones, like Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker.
Thanks for your perspective, its HIGHLY appreciated 8D The Back to Nature, yea, you make valid points on that. I feel because I run fewer counters is one of the reasons, more of a "ace in the hole" type thing, BUT I get what your saying. As for AEtherling, your right, the UWx decks run him for that exact reason. I guess ultimately its more of a "why not use it while you can" type thing -- I mean, hes just so freaking GREAT! As for the Bile Blight, I feel you on that BUT, with all of the cheap red coming + the slivers, I think the added "pressure" could have a positive effect. Your right though, AEtherspouts, Hornet Nest, and Perilous Vault can/will all do the job quite well actually, and lets not forget how much fun Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver can/will be when facing a "sliver" deck.
As usual, THANK YOU for your insight! Its actually making me really think/consider different aspects of deck building as a whole.
My advice, which is based off the list of enchantments provided, is to drop the 1 Back to Nature and run a 4th Abrupt Decay. You still hit all the cards you want to hit (I don't see Whip or Bident being that big of an issue) with decay and tackle some additional anti-aggro support in the MB.
The reason I favor 3 Jace and 2 Nissa, is because Jace helps me stay in control or take control. He does it better than Nissa, which is why I run 3. Making sure that I can either keep ahead when working with so many 1 for 1 options means I need to see the tools to make sure it is consistent.
Nissa is more offensive than she is defensive in the sense that her 4/4's only do so much to stabilize you and her ability to untap only matters if you have the cards in hand to take advantage of it, i.e counters or removal. Eventually, when you stabilize, you are going to come across your finisher which makes the count less relevant than that of the tools that find you the things that matter, be it a counter spell, removal spell, or a finisher. Kiora and Ingenuity are great and all, but Kiora does not always pull you out of top deck mode like Ingenuity and Jace do, and Ingenuity does not give you any board presence.
I don't think 2 Jace and 3 Nissa would be wrong by any means, I just prefer to make sure I can reliably find what I need for any given moment more often than I would like to have creatures being able to apply pressure.
/mind blown ... I don't know why I didn't consider that lol!
Thanks again!
It helps if you think about your card choices in terms of what you are trying to achieve and why, rather than just what the card does. Helps to look at the big picture when deciding on slight shifts in tools.
Funny that you mention the Jace, the Living Guildpact. I'm still playing around with some of the new stuff and new Jace is actually not half bad. There are many situations where I'd want TLG over AoT. Right now, I'm messing around with a sort of Nyx Weaver toolbox variant I've been brewing. Since Nyx Weaver was printed, I had always wanted to put something like this together, but it really never functioned as well as I had hoped. Aetherspouts gives the deck the boost I had been looking for.
Thanks for the reply! I am curious though, Nyx Weaver ... why is it in this deck? I'm trying to think of a logical reason -- but I cant. As for Jace, the Living Guildpact I totally agree he isnt as bad as everyone is making him out to be. I honesty feel hes going to be REALLY good in the coming months, BUT for now i'm still debating. I mean sure, he does not "draw" you cards per-say however, what he does is fix your draws (we all doubted scry lands) as well as the added "bounce" and his "quick" ultimate. All and all, the NEW Jace isnt a complete loss, I just think everyone is just "Jace spoiled."
Thanks for the reply! I am curious though, Nyx Weaver ... why is it in this deck? I'm trying to think of a logical reason -- but I cant. As for Jace, the Living Guildpact I totally agree he isnt as bad as everyone is making him out to be. I honesty feel hes going to be REALLY good in the coming months, BUT for now i'm still debating. I mean sure, he does not "draw" you cards per-say however, what he does is fix your draws (we all doubted scry lands) as well as the added "bounce" and his "quick" ultimate. All and all, the NEW Jace isnt a complete loss, I just think everyone is just "Jace spoiled."
Nyx Weaver allows you to buyback cards in the graveyard (Fogs, counters, kill spells, etc...). It also provides your walkers protection from fliers.
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I'd keep Toughtseize in against red decks. Stripping a 3+ damage burn spell is still beneficial, or a Stormbreath.
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Bring to Niv
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Legacy - Lands
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2 Nissa, Worldwaker
3 Kiora, the Crashing Wave
3 Jace, Architect of Thought
2 Garruk, Apex Predator
Creature
4 Sylvan Caryatid
Instant
2 Syncopate
4 Dissolve
3 Abrupt Decay
3 Hero's Downfall
1 Putrefy
4 AEtherspouts
2 Ultimate Price
2 Jace's Ingenuity
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Breeding Pool
3 Temple of Mystery
3 Temple of Deceit
4 Temple of Malady
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Darksteel Citadel
2 Llanowar Wastes
2 Yavimaya Coast
1 Forest
4 Hornet Nest
3 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
2 Negate
1 Dispel
3 Thoughtseize
2 Perilous Vault
This is the list I have currently that I am pretty happy with. I have not really looked back since dropping Courser of Kruphix and moving Thoughtseize and Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver to the SB.
Perilous Vault was one of the cards I opened at the pre-release and picked up a second copy of from a UR player after the event. I am running it over In Garruk's Wake right now, primarily because it allows me to sweep a board sooner against the midrange decks and it is mire playable against aggro than IGW is. Most decks are not packing artifact removal against us and it is too big for Abrupt Decay so it is pretty good at meeting a resolution. You can always untuck it from a Detention Sphere against control with an Abrupt Decay which makes this card something you can side in over AEtherspouts against Control to activate in a pinch.
My initial concern was that it will be nuking our walkers, but the draw-go approach makes this fairly less common since you are allowed to pick your spots for dropping a walker a bit more effectively.
WIth my list above, I would drop:
2 Syncopate
4 Dissolve
1 Garruk, Apex Predator
You could leave in a Dissolve or two if you want, I may opt for keeping in Syncopate over Dissolve depending on how likely they are to be tapping down each turn. Honestly though, I would just move out all the counter and a single Garruk and if I wanted to get Vault into the mix, I would probably take out the 2nd Garruk and a Jace. Your strategy here would be to either take over with removal and Ashiok or max value out of Vault or Spouts so you can drop a Nissa or Kiora and start grinding them down.
While I am a fan of your list, I still want to hear your reasons for keeping Kiora while cutting Courser. They seem like a package deal to me, with Kiora's -1 becoming much worse without the support. Without courser, I'd be tempted to go back to Jace, Architect of Thought until rotation.
My reasons have not changed at all, I think I mentioned them a couple pages back.
Even with as much color fixing as we have right now, GG, BB, and UU is pretty demanding and it is hard to get there without shocking yourself a couple times just to make sure you could play T2 or 3 Courser, possibly have mana open for Heroes Downfall, and ultimately have a timely UU for AEtherspouts. It is just a lot to want to do in a short amount of turns and the color hungry cards offset any cushion your really have from Courser of Kruphix, where gaining life becomes relevant again in the later stages of the game - the problem with this is that it is a horribly body in the later stages of the game.
The idea was to give myself 2 primary colors to focus on, which were BB and UU which give me the necessary removal to help play a long game. Courser may be a phenomenal card, and I am not saying it is not, but Heroe Downfall and Dissolve have been your best options at 3CC if you want the game to go long and they have been since Theros. Courser is good at making the game go longer, but in a much different way. Having Kiora to help you sift through the top with library manipulation and Courser to pull off a second land in the event you do not hit your land drop is pretty nuts. But here is my initial question for you.
Exactly what are you ramping into with all of the excess land you are theoretically seeing?
The deck has Garruk at the top end, but let's be real - the format is slow enough where you do not need a whole lot of ramp to actually get the guy out and even on turn 6 the card is a complete bomb.
Bant even has something like Sphinx's Revelation which is something that scales with all of these excess land drops you are hitting with Kiora and Courser, and even those Bant lists do not run Courser of Kruphix.
Jace, Architect of Thought is an incredible draw engine, but he is hardly the same tool Kiora, the Crashing Wave is, and as much as I rarely use her +1, having access to that option is something Jace can not, and never will, do. If you are simply looking at both of them as draw engines, it may seem tempting to revert to Jace and leave Kiora out of it. I hardly believe that is the right way of evaluating the situation though. I have not looked back after removing Courser and I don't really intend to because the deck has just been running much more as I had expected since it's exclusion. Kiora is far from something I would contemplate cutting because unlike Courser, she is never a horrid top deck and she has a modular slot which is far more valuable when you are trying to play a control game.
Here's my current list that I'm toying with, sure to change before FNM.
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Sylvan Caryatid
3 Deathrite Shaman
1 Prognostic Sphinx
Planeswalkers
4 Kiora, the Crashing Wave
3 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
2 Nissa, Worldwaker
2 Jace, Architect of Thought
1 Jace, the Living Guildpact
2 Garruk, Apex Predator
3 Hero's Downfall
2 AEtherspouts
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Devour Flesh
1 Doom Blade
1 Far//Away
Lands
4 Breeding Pool
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Watery Grave
3 Temple of Mystery
3 Temple of Deceit
3 Temple of Malady
2 Forest
I'm unsure if I will be keeping the Sphinx in the deck. It's tough with how much removal there is right now. I'm also beginning to think about moving Ashiok to the SB. Deathrite Shaman continues to just be great. I'm unsure the mix of cheap kill spells i want right now. I know there will be other Walker decks floating around in my local meta, but I'm unsure of how much aggro there will be.
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I really like your "current" version of BUG however, because of the removal of Courser of Kruphix I found it necessary to drop a singleton of Back to Nature in the MB (for all those enchantments I wont be running). I also chose to go a little lighter on counterspells IE only 4 MD and 2 SB, this is just a personal preferance really, nothing wrong with more (Im still debating dropping down to two MB) but I digress -- here it is 8D
Creatures: 5
1 Aetherling
4 Sylvan Caryatid
Walkers: 10
2 Garruk, Apex Predator
3 Jace, Architect of Thought
3 Kiora, the Crashing Wave
2 Nissa, Worldwaker
Instants: 20
3 Abrupt Decay
4 Aetherspouts
1 Back to Nature
4 Dissolve
3 Hero's Downfall
2 Jace's Ingenuity
1 Putrefy
2 Ultimate Price
4 Breeding Pool
1 Darksteel Citadel
2 Forest
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Temple of Deceit
2 Temple of Malady
4 Temple of Mystery
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Yavimaya Coast
3 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
2 Perilous Vault
2 Negate
4 Hornet Nest
4 Thoughtseize
I still want to keep Aetherling in the deck because in all honesty its STILL the best finisher when splashing blue plain/simple. I do like the addition of Ultimate Price in the MB, I think with the direction of the "meta" this will serve the deck very well in the short-term. When the "rotation" happens, I am leaning (going on current information of course) towards 2x Bile Blight as a replacement.
---edit---
If Slivers become a thing, the 2x Bile Blight will become a "mandatory" switch imo.
More bang for your buck really, I mean, I am already running 1x Putrefy for artifact hate.
edit: The only reason I was not running it before was I still had the Courser of Kruphix in the deck -- now that they are gone -- its not an issue uD
Banishing Light
Detention Sphere
Chain to the Rocks
Underworld Connections
Courser of Kruphix
Unflinching Courage
Madcap Skills
Ethereal Armor
Gift of Orzhova
Boon Satyr
Whip of Erebos
Hammer of Purphoros
Bident of Thassa
Satyr Firedancer
Fate Unraveler
Brain Maggot
Gnarled Scarhide
...the list can go on. The point im trying to make is there is A LOT of enchantments being played in standard right now. All of the above cards (or at least most of them anyway) have been used/played in tier one decks. So, in closing, I think the evidence above supports my claim that a "singleton" is a good idea 8D
I don't quite understand the Back to Nature to be honest. Counterspells are probably better than BtN, not many decks run out multiple enchantments and the ones that do are still soft to AEtherspouts and other removal simply because most enchantments in the format are also creatures. The main exception to this is something like Detention Sphere, Banishing Light, Underworld Connections, or Gods, which leaves Abrupt Decay as an out to these types of enchantments. BtN seems like a strange card to be packing in the MB. It is not the same thing as Deicide is for white control decks because the decks use it as an out to Gods or the non-creature enchantments.
Just seems strange I guess.
AEtherling seems fine in the MB. The only reason I am not running it is because I don't have any room and I don't feel the need to actually make room personally. All of your walkers are pretty good at ending a game if you stabilize, you could probably count Jace out of that I suppose, but it is not like the deck lacks any sort of threat density. What makes UBG so appealing in my eyes, is that your win conditions (walkers) are all good at controlling a board until you stabilize, where UW control decks have fewer walkers to accomplish this which lowers the threat density and makes AEtherling a pretty big role player. The ration of removal any given deck has against UW as opposed to UBG is larger.
AEtherspouts can wreck them easily enough. Even if they get to a point where they are only attacking with 1 sliver to get around it, eventually Garruk will make chump blockers for days or Kiora will start locking down their options for attackers and Nissa will finally overwhelm them. They can't reasonably keep attacking into you with a single creature in hopes of winning the long game and if they attack with more than 1 they are susceptible to blow outs. Having Indestructibility does not mean a whole lot when your end game is no longer existent. There is also Hornet Nest and Perilous Vault out of the board which can provide you blockers for a fair period of time Vaults are answers to Sliver Hivelord.
Thanks for your perspective, its HIGHLY appreciated 8D The Back to Nature, yea, you make valid points on that. I feel because I run fewer counters is one of the reasons, more of a "ace in the hole" type thing, BUT I get what your saying. As for AEtherling, your right, the UWx decks run him for that exact reason. I guess ultimately its more of a "why not use it while you can" type thing -- I mean, hes just so freaking GREAT! As for the Bile Blight, I feel you on that BUT, with all of the cheap red coming + the slivers, I think the added "pressure" could have a positive effect. Your right though, AEtherspouts, Hornet Nest, and Perilous Vault can/will all do the job quite well actually, and lets not forget how much fun Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver can/will be when facing a "sliver" deck.
As usual, THANK YOU for your insight! Its actually making me really think/consider different aspects of deck building as a whole.
---edit---
Admittedly, I am still kinda back/fourth on running 3 Jace, Architect of Thought over 3 Nissa, Worldwaker. I have found "in testing," that with 2 Jace, Architect of Thought. 3 Kiora, the Crashing Wave, 2 Jace's Ingenuity, and all the 'Scry' the deck has enough draw/deck manipulation. Hell, for a minute there I was experimenting with the "New Jace," IE Jace, the Living Guildpact ,and honestly (not saying i'm switching or anything) but it actually played ok in this type of shell.
Thanks again!
The reason I favor 3 Jace and 2 Nissa, is because Jace helps me stay in control or take control. He does it better than Nissa, which is why I run 3. Making sure that I can either keep ahead when working with so many 1 for 1 options means I need to see the tools to make sure it is consistent.
Nissa is more offensive than she is defensive in the sense that her 4/4's only do so much to stabilize you and her ability to untap only matters if you have the cards in hand to take advantage of it, i.e counters or removal. Eventually, when you stabilize, you are going to come across your finisher which makes the count less relevant than that of the tools that find you the things that matter, be it a counter spell, removal spell, or a finisher. Kiora and Ingenuity are great and all, but Kiora does not always pull you out of top deck mode like Ingenuity and Jace do, and Ingenuity does not give you any board presence.
I don't think 2 Jace and 3 Nissa would be wrong by any means, I just prefer to make sure I can reliably find what I need for any given moment more often than I would like to have creatures being able to apply pressure.
It helps if you think about your card choices in terms of what you are trying to achieve and why, rather than just what the card does. Helps to look at the big picture when deciding on slight shifts in tools.
Funny that you mention the Jace, the Living Guildpact. I'm still playing around with some of the new stuff and new Jace is actually not half bad. There are many situations where I'd want TLG over AoT. Right now, I'm messing around with a sort of Nyx Weaver toolbox variant I've been brewing. Since Nyx Weaver was printed, I had always wanted to put something like this together, but it really never functioned as well as I had hoped. Aetherspouts gives the deck the boost I had been looking for.
1 Garruk, Apex Predator
1 Jace, Architect of Thought
1 Jace, the Living Guildpact
3 Kiora, the Crashing Wave
2 Nissa, Worldwaker
1 Aetherling
4 Nyx Weaver
2 Prophet of Kruphix
3 Sylvan Caryatid
1 Abrupt Decay
3 Aetherspouts
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Dissolve
4 Fog
2 Hero's Downfall
1 In Garruk's Wake
1 Jace's Ingenuity
1 Syncopate
4 Breeding Pool
4 Overgrown Tomb
2 Watery Grave
1 Llanlower Wastes
1 Yavimaya Coast
1 Temple of Deceit
4 Temple of Malady
4 Temple of Mystery
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Dispel
1 Dissipate
2 Gainsay
1 Garruk, Apex Predator
2 Negate
2 Prognostic Sphinx
3 Thoughtseize
Nyx Weaver allows you to buyback cards in the graveyard (Fogs, counters, kill spells, etc...). It also provides your walkers protection from fliers.