i agree with everything you said except the conclusion to play surgical haha. in my opinion being free and costing you a card its worse than costing 1 mana and be a 1x1
Fair enough, usually I find myeself with enough cards and not enough time/mana but your mileage may vary.
The reason surgical is being tested as a replacement is that beside the face value of the gy hate it does 3/4 of what git probe did for us, cost 2 life, trigger prowess, and let us look at our opponent's hand. All it's missing is the card draw which is significant. Manamorphose costs too much to get going(it can't get us our second land), it's only good on the turns weve decided to go all in, it doesnt get us any information on our opponent's hand, and doesnt hit our life total. Dismember isn't a free spell, doesnt draw a card, doesnt always have a target, and doesnt let us look at our opponent's hand.
Nothing can completely replace probe, but surgical gets the closest.
It also has the upside of kicking the dredge in the balls and being a decent discard spell sometimes.
This is my current postban list. Before I was running the stock list with steppe lynx minus 2 bolts and 1 TBR and adding the 3 TS.
Tainted strike works with any creature that has at least 3 power, and become immense. 3 from the creature, 1 from ts, and 6 from BI. So that includes wild nacatl, death's shadow, steppe lynx(with a fetch), and monastery swiftspear. It also works with any 4+ power creature and TBR, which admittedly is only death's shadow, greenwheel liberator, and swiftspear if you have an extra prowess trigger. This can be expanded to any creature if you have a mutagenic growth.
The point remains that anything short of 10 can be a major letdown. I have had some games where I used more than one ts to get to the 10 though. Also in a pinch you can use it for the prowess trigger by targeting an opponent's creature. Or semi-fog an attack the same way.
mtggoldfish is a good way to keep up with the metagame. It won't reflect your local meta but it's good to know for online/larger events.
I'm personally not fond of playing any copies of Tainted Strike. Hitting for anything less than 10 is pointless, and splitting resources between dealing damage and dealing poison is inefficient. In that case, I'd just be playing a worse version of infect.
I've been playtesting against Jund under the current bannings and the deck doesn't feel too vastly different without Probe (at last check, replaced with 2 Surgical, 1 Dismember, 1 Apostle's Blessing). Granted Jund is an OK matchup for us anyway, just thought I'd point that out.
Something else to note: i've read whispers of Tron regaining its position in this new meta, which makes me want to keep White for Path in the SB. Facing down wurmcoils is completely demoralizing imo.
While there are hands where the ts can get in the way they are rare. On the whole ive been testing it for a few months even pre-ban and it has worked very well for me. I like the deck being potentially a full turn faster, and winning me some matches at my last gpt that I would have lost if it had been a tbr instead. (went undefeated in swiss, lost to bant eldrazi in the top8)at the cost of some small % of games that fou would likely mulligan anyways. That said I understand that it's not for everyone.
Tron has been in the t1 again for about a month now. That definitely puts paths in the board. Honestly though tron is usually a 'go faster' scenario anyways. If they get their mana online we likely lose. We don't have an answer for ugin
This is what im currently running. The surgicals and tainted strike keep the deck feeling very fast and consistently t2-4. Fatal push has done very well so far. Renegade and liberator have performed very well, I used to play gnarlwood dryad and grim flayer and I missed the deathtouch when I switched to steppe lynx. Renegade definitely is more consistent and powerful when blocked than lynx.
Ooooh Tainted Strike, Why didn't I think of that. It's like an extra Double Strike. Problem is you have to use it when you know there's 10 damage.
Usually yes, but having 3 in the deck adds the opportunity of drawing into a second one to finish the job. One could add a phyrexian crusader to the sb to help the infect out too.
I tooled around with rampager in the original list and im not a big fan. Costing 2 to bloodrush means with tbr we need 4 mana to go off, which is a lot. I like the idea of bloodrush guys but I would lean towards rubblebelt maaka and slaughterhorn for the mana efficiency.
This is what im currently running. The surgicals and tainted strike keep the deck feeling very fast and consistently t2-4. Fatal push has done very well so far. Renegade and liberator have performed very well, I used to play gnarlwood dryad and grim flayer and I missed the deathtouch when I switched to steppe lynx. Renegade definitely is more consistent and powerful when blocked than lynx.
I could definitely dig playing surgical back in the md, I did that for quite some time before I got my baubles.
The main issue with most of these though is that they don't cantrip. Which throws off our deck balance. We may find we need to add more creatures in this slot. The new Revolt ape and/or the 1g 4/3 could be nice additions.
Well b&r happened...
We lost git probe. There really isnt anything to fill that specific role that we arent already using. My first thought is to use the slots to just increase the number of threats/disruption.
Wasn't bolt snap bolt also a great way of killing this deck?
Bolt-snap-bolt was favored against DSZ because they could take advantage of your low life total if you were being aggressive and just bolt you to death. But if you slowed down they had a better lategame too.
Bolt is still effective against our deck, not against the shadow itself but it does fine against lynx, nacatl and swiftspear. There are a high number of games where we end it with not shadow so saying bolt is ineffective against our deck isn't fair.
Also I acknowledge that more decks get helped by this being a one mana removal spell but those same decks already had 2 mana options that were easily as good as this against us. Terminate is honestly about the same as this for most decks. My point was that decks that run 17 kill spells will still run 17 kill spells. The 'upgrade' of this being 1 mana cheaper really isn't much of a factor in our matchup. We have to have more threats than they have answers. That is generally limited by handsize and not mana efficiency.
I really dont see how push is going to be an issue for us. The decks that wanted cheap efficient removal already had as much as they wanted before. We always have to fight through removal, what does it change that theres one more option for them. It's never been the efficiency of removal either but the amount in a hand that we needed to deal with.
What I think is interesting is how this card helps our deck. Oftentimes a goyf, thoghtknot, type creature just stonewalls us because or main removal is bolt. I think push really shines IN our deck not against it.
By the time youre casting mandrills or stalker 1v2 mana is much smaller. And against the decks that we swap mandrills in flying is much better than trample. Youre probably right id like to try it though.
Fatal push is just another cheap removal spell. The decks that want it already had path or bolt or terminate. Tbh it wont change much for us.
That said I would be very interested in testing it in the bolt slot for our deck. Or in the sb. Goyf can be a real pain to deal with and this is so much more of a universal answer. Thoughts?
Also on tombstalker. Forget killing tks or trading with smasher. It has flying! Just kill them with it! I want to try this in the mandrill slot now.
Fair enough, usually I find myeself with enough cards and not enough time/mana but your mileage may vary.
Nothing can completely replace probe, but surgical gets the closest.
It also has the upside of kicking the dredge in the balls and being a decent discard spell sometimes.
Tainted strike works with any creature that has at least 3 power, and become immense. 3 from the creature, 1 from ts, and 6 from BI. So that includes wild nacatl, death's shadow, steppe lynx(with a fetch), and monastery swiftspear. It also works with any 4+ power creature and TBR, which admittedly is only death's shadow, greenwheel liberator, and swiftspear if you have an extra prowess trigger. This can be expanded to any creature if you have a mutagenic growth.
The point remains that anything short of 10 can be a major letdown. I have had some games where I used more than one ts to get to the 10 though. Also in a pinch you can use it for the prowess trigger by targeting an opponent's creature. Or semi-fog an attack the same way.
mtggoldfish is a good way to keep up with the metagame. It won't reflect your local meta but it's good to know for online/larger events.
While there are hands where the ts can get in the way they are rare. On the whole ive been testing it for a few months even pre-ban and it has worked very well for me. I like the deck being potentially a full turn faster, and winning me some matches at my last gpt that I would have lost if it had been a tbr instead. (went undefeated in swiss, lost to bant eldrazi in the top8)at the cost of some small % of games that fou would likely mulligan anyways. That said I understand that it's not for everyone.
Tron has been in the t1 again for about a month now. That definitely puts paths in the board. Honestly though tron is usually a 'go faster' scenario anyways. If they get their mana online we likely lose. We don't have an answer for ugin
Usually yes, but having 3 in the deck adds the opportunity of drawing into a second one to finish the job. One could add a phyrexian crusader to the sb to help the infect out too.
This is what im currently running. The surgicals and tainted strike keep the deck feeling very fast and consistently t2-4. Fatal push has done very well so far. Renegade and liberator have performed very well, I used to play gnarlwood dryad and grim flayer and I missed the deathtouch when I switched to steppe lynx. Renegade definitely is more consistent and powerful when blocked than lynx.
That's a completely different deck.
The main issue with most of these though is that they don't cantrip. Which throws off our deck balance. We may find we need to add more creatures in this slot. The new Revolt ape and/or the 1g 4/3 could be nice additions.
We lost git probe. There really isnt anything to fill that specific role that we arent already using. My first thought is to use the slots to just increase the number of threats/disruption.
Bolt-snap-bolt was favored against DSZ because they could take advantage of your low life total if you were being aggressive and just bolt you to death. But if you slowed down they had a better lategame too.
Also I acknowledge that more decks get helped by this being a one mana removal spell but those same decks already had 2 mana options that were easily as good as this against us. Terminate is honestly about the same as this for most decks. My point was that decks that run 17 kill spells will still run 17 kill spells. The 'upgrade' of this being 1 mana cheaper really isn't much of a factor in our matchup. We have to have more threats than they have answers. That is generally limited by handsize and not mana efficiency.
What I think is interesting is how this card helps our deck. Oftentimes a goyf, thoghtknot, type creature just stonewalls us because or main removal is bolt. I think push really shines IN our deck not against it.
That said I would be very interested in testing it in the bolt slot for our deck. Or in the sb. Goyf can be a real pain to deal with and this is so much more of a universal answer. Thoughts?
Also on tombstalker. Forget killing tks or trading with smasher. It has flying! Just kill them with it! I want to try this in the mandrill slot now.