Comments on: Bending Nissa Revane

By: Five With Flores » What Makes Bestial Menace the Coolest?

Five With Flores » What Makes Bestial Menace the Coolest? — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 04:35:56 +0000

[...] modern inheritor to those decks, Mono-Green Eldrazi / Nissa Revane decks can LEGO Monument to Menace in two ways (the latter with the poor 1/1 Snake token likely [...]

By: admin

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:19:06 +0000

@Markwerf
It is honestly shocking to me how bad the analysis of this matchup you see on the Internet is.

People are so invested in this idea that Jund has more card advantage that they simply do not see how the matchup plays out. Then again, they probably don’t understand how card advantage works.

First of all, the notion that Jund is favored even slightly is unsupportable. Blightning is very powerful but the decks escape Stage One and go to a point where both decks are playing big threats off the top. Naya has more threats, and its most significant threats are far more powerful at a point in the game where Blightning no longer has any effect beyond a Lightning Bolt to the jaw. The matchup does not occur in the hand, it occurs on the table.

I don’t know what you think of as “bad” but Jund averaged 50% in the Swiss portion.

The mana analysis of Lightsaber is also quite terrible.

As far as I can tell you have just regurgitated drivel expelled by a bunch of whiners who actually have no interest in investigating the actual best decks in the format. The mana of Lightsaber is actually quite stable. It has to be structured a certain way in order to make the cards work (Rootbound Crag, Wild Nacatl)… It doesn’t really matter if there are only four Forests. You seem to think that Noble Hierarch loses efficacy after turn one; in fact, if you play it on turn two, you still have the fastest Bloodbraid Elf in the room, and a turn four Baneslayer Angel ain’t bad, either.

However if you look at the total math, you will see that there are many positive avenues to advantage beyond the superficial optimal draw… and they are all faster and better than what other decks in the format offer. You should instead look at how devastating a turn one Hierarch is — which is on the bonus — rather than lamenting the percentage of the time it does not occur.

It might be more interesting to discuss things like why these vastly favored Jund players all had Sprouting Thrinax in their decks after sideboarding. It isn’t even a card any more when there are Celestial Purges and Great Sable Stags in the Naya deck. The fact that their supposedly more powerful deck was packing an almost impossible to play Gnarled Mass after sideboarding means that they probably don’t understand the matchup and you should stop listening to them about who is supposed to win it.

Naya is a flat-out better deck. It’s faster, it has better threats, and when the decks fight, Naya has more bigger stuff. Naya is better against decks like RDW and Bushwhacker, which are challenging or very difficult to beat for Jund. Naya never loses to Fog, whereas Jund is quite clearly challenged by Fog. Jund has a 50% matchup with Jund. All evidence shows that Naya beats Jund, especially in multiple-game matches. I really don’t see how this is even an argument. Naya is both a better deck and better positioned in the metagame.

By: Markwerf

Markwerf — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 05:51:41 +0000

I find it somewhat annoying to see you call ‘Naya lightsaber’ the best deck. Kudos to coimbra for playing excellent and winning worlds but the standard deck is just NOT good. Naya in itself is an alright archetype though not really spectacular, which is also shown in analysis from the standard portion of worlds. Coimbra himself only did 4-2 there for example and on average the archetype did really bad. The matchup agianst jund is actually one of the reasons for this because it’s NOT a good matchup. It’s not bad either but jund is favored slightly just because they have more card advantage and can deal with any threat you lay basically efficiently while you can’t with blightning, broodmate and malakir bloodwitch. The best plan is offcourse the mana denial plan which worked fantastically for coimbra leading to 6 straight wins against jund and the title.
This however leads me to your list and why coimbra got lucky. The mana sucks.
ruinblaster needs double red and fast yet the deck only plays 11 red sources. Hierarch needs turn 1 green, yet only 4 lands do that.
Bad mana happens more and can still lead to fine decks with power making up for it. However there is one bigger flaw even,
bloodbraid elf and hierarch both benefit from three drops hugely. Afterall cascading into a 3-drop or playing one turn 2 is the best thing you can do, yet the deck only plays thoctar. Knight of reliquary is also in the same colors which is easy to play, you already play 4 fetches anyway adding 4 or 5 more is easy. An easy cut is path to exile, not only are 4 in this metagame where you dont want to fix people’s mana for free or ramp them not good, it’s also often a horrible cascade target (no target, or you played elf turn 3 and dont want to target). Furthermore this deck tends to trump other threats by just playing a better one, path is not neccesary as a 4-of, 2 is better. Against a big part of the meta you swap it out for celestial purge anyway. For the matchups where you DO need extra removal that isn’t purge like the mirror you can just bring in some o-rings. A better cascade and deals with baneslayer just as well. Also very good against turbofog, eldrazi green and most monoW emeria decks.
Anyway enough of a rant, the deck is still ok it’s just suboptimal. Calling it the ‘best deck’ while it’s far from that just itched me to write this.

By: MTGBattlefield

MTGBattlefield — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:31:07 +0000

Bending Nissa Revane…

Your story has been summoned to the battlefield - Trackback from MTGBattlefield…

By: Worlds 2009 went down in style! « The Exploration

Worlds 2009 went down in style! « The Exploration — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:38:33 +0000

[...] duel” in the finals, Coimbra took it down in three with his Naya Lightsaber deck (Mike Flores is one happy man) versus David Reitbauer of Austria (playing Jund). Coimbra took himself to the finals after he [...]