[Obsolete Primer] Matchup Analysis. Blue Green vs Tooth and Nail

[HKKID]

Tooth and Nail vs Blue Green Control.


Without significant debate, TAN and UG control are considered to be the number 2 and number 3 decks in the metagame at the moment. So what happens when they meet, and how does Betrayers effect that? Well let's first examine the decks themselves.


Tooth and Nail, (maindeck by ButteBlues18)
Mana Base
10 Forest
4 Urza's Tower
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Mine
1 Boseiju who Shelters All
Mana Tutors
4 Sakura Tribe Elder
4 Sylvan Scrying
3 Reap and Sow
Tooth and Nail and other Critters
4 Viridian Shaman
4 Eternal Witness
4 Tooth and Nail
1 Kiki-Jiki Mirror-Breaker
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Duplicant
2 Sundering Titan
1 Leonin Abunas
1 Platinum Angel
Miscellaneous
4 Oxidize
3 Mindslaver


This is very close to what I would consider THE tooth and nail deck. It is appropriately keyed to beating Ravager Affinity, and he avoids making the common mistake of playing Sensei's Divining Top. Mindslaver sees a lot of debate, however ButteBlues18 justified them this way: "Mindslaver is used because frankly, there is no other choice in this deck that is decent, let alone this card. Mindslaver just happens to actually matter occasionally." The one change I would probably make is to remove the maindeck Boseiju, however I'll explain why below. It is important to note that this decklist is pre Betrayers of Kamigawa, however there is not a whole lot in betrayers that even bears testing.


Post-Betrayers Blue Green Control (maindeck by HKKID)
Manabase
11 Island
12 Forest
Creatures
4 Sakura Tribe Elder
3 Viridian Shaman
4 Eternal Witness
3 Ninja of the Deep Hours
2 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror
Spells
4 Kodama's Reach
4 Manaleak
4 Hinder
4 Oxidize
3 Vedalken Shackles
2 Rude Awakening

There is significantly more debate about the best UG deck. However, this particular build is a healthy place to start. It packs a good blend of ravager hate, and generic control. The Ninja of the Deep Hours are the only Betrayers addition, however there are a number of other possible choices that should be tested before the decklist can be considered finalized. I will cover sideboarding options for both decks later on, however first let's take a look at how game one is likely to play out.



Game 1
Between these two decks, the first game should go overwhelmingly to the Tooth and Nail player, due to a phenomenon known as Lineup Theory. In plain English, this is also referred to as "lotsa threats, not a lotsa counters". Reap and Sow and Sylvan Scrying match up nicely with Manaleak and Hinder to allow the UG player to keep Boseiju off the board. The respective contributions from Eternal Witnesses cancel each other out, and we are left with a hypothetical 0 net gain. While this means in theory the Tooth and Nail player has to topdeck his 1 Boseiju to get an uncounterable Tooth and Nail, in practice it means if as a UG player you try that, You'll have no more counters left in your deck for said Tooth and Nail, or Mindslaver, or randomly hardcast Sundering Titans.

OUCH! Even without maindecked Boseiju, the Manaleaks go dead pretty fast if the land search resolves. For those of you who read the Lineup Theory article, you will realize that Hinder lines up with nothing. For those of you who haven't, the simple version, is that the TAN player will eventually draw whatever spell you hindered, and given his many shuffling effects, it probably won't be on the last turn of the game either.

All this points to one simple strategy for playing Blue Green. Win fast! Every passing turn of inaction brings victory closer to a Tooth Player. Therefore as UG you want to make use of your cards and tempo, before they vanish to insignificance. For this reason, Vine Trellis in the tooth and nail deck can actually have quite a significant impact on the result of game 1. If you're the Tooth Player, your goal is to not die. Because the long game favors you with your blatantly more powerful spells, you need not try for a quick win. Bait out his countermagic with land tutors, trade off blockers, and for the love of god, don't try for the infamous turn 4 TaN, (unless of course your opponent doesn't have the mana for a counter), because more often than not, it's the wrong play. The only things you should be afraid of are an out of control Ninja, and a Rude Awakening.

That explains the results of game 1 quite well. Blue green was simply not designed for blistering speed. Every single creature has a casting cost lower than it's toughness, and even the potentially lethal Rude Awakening threat takes 8 lands to go active, and 10 before it deals 20 damage (assuming no blockers). Thus in a win fast or lose matchup UG will more often than not, end up losing.

Sideboarding UG
Because game 1 is such a bad matchup, and Tooth and Nail is so popular, Blue Green typically brings in 7+ cards to fight it. Of those 7, no more than 4 should be exclusively for combating Tooth. At present there are two relatively popular sideboard strategies, both of which I will cover. Both strategies attempt to eliminate the Boseiju problem, as well as combat the TAN manabase.

Option 1: Bloodmoon and Maindecked Mountain
This is the more elegant of the two strategies. A maindecked mountain (typically in place of a forest) is used as a Kodama's Reach/Sakura Tribe Elder target. With 8 tutors, and 1 mountain, the land is likely to show up by turn 4, where it is ideally used to play a bloodmoon. Aside from turning the Urzatron into sub-par forests, it also takes that uncounterable clause out of Boseiju.

This is quite elegant, as it takes a minimal mana investment, and greatly reduces the effect of high casting cost spells, while increasing the effectiveness of manaleak. The Down side is that it is not useful in any other matchups, it doesn't prevent him from casting Tooth once he hits 9 mana, and it allows for randomly cast from hand Kiki Jikis.

Option 2: Temporal Adept
Bouncing a land per turn effectively "Locks" the opposing land total where it is. If that land just so happens to come into play tapped (like Boseiju), it will never get a chance to tap for mana either.

The big advantage of Temporal Adept is that it works for items other than land as well. It can be used to get rid of an annoying cast Platinum Angel, or (god forbid) a Sundering Titan. The other advantage, is that it does not require a splash color. The disadvantage is it does require 3 blue a turn, which can make it particularly difficult to bounce a land, AND cast a counterspell in the same turn.

Other Cards
Along with the standard options 1 and two, UG typically is forced to bring in other cards as well. Quash from Betrayers looks to be the most useful of these. Not only is it dynamite against Tooth and Nail, quash also is very strong in the mirror, and against any deck with black. Along those lines, a number of decks choosing the Temporal Adept sideboard, have placed a Swamp maindeck, and used Cranial Extraction. Other options include a more controlling approach with Rewind and/or Jushi Apprentice. Choices to avoid are trying to play your own Boseiju, trying to make an aggressive version of UG, or trying to set a Chalice of the Void to 7 mana. None of these options have proven particularly effective in winning this matchup.

Sideboarding Tooth & Nail
Tooth and Nail typically does not sideboard cards exclusively to deal with Blue Green. Instead the sideboard cards in this matchup must be useful against a variety of other decks as well. Sundering Titan is the most common choice, because hardcast Titans are quite devastating even when Tooth and Nail gets cranially Extracted by BG. If not maindecked, Boseiju and Mindslavers also tend to come off the sideboard. The last popular choice is to bring in additional copies of Platinum angel, in hopes that the UG player is boarding out his bounce, artifact destruction, and Vedalken Shackles.

Game 2 and 3
This matchup takes a different tune after sideboarding. The Blue Green player’s immediate goal is to assert his dominance over the Urzatron and Bosieju. If/When he manages to accomplish this, the Tooth and Nail player becomes stuck in a difficult position. Without its vast mana acceleration a Tooth and Nail deck is just some janky collection of 7 9 and 10 mana cards, that it has to get passed an increased amount of countermagic. Just to add insult to injury, his Boseijus are also taken out of the equation, making forcing ANYTHING past the counters before it’s too late an unlikely eventuality.

This points to a clear strategy for each deck in games 2 and 3. If you are Tooth and Nail, you want to combo off as fast as possible. You can no longer sit behind the superior power and volume of your game breaking spells. This is doubly true if facing the Cranial Extraction sideboard, since the longer you wait on a threat, the greater the risk of it getting Cranially Extracted.

On the other hand, if you are the UG player you want to slow things down as much as possible. Try to counter the critical land search spells, and aggressively develop your early manabase. Once you control the urzatron you control the game.

Final Analysis
Overall The edge in this matchup definitely goes to Tooth and Nail. Game 1 is fairly easy to win. Games 2 and three are significantly more fair, however the UG player still has the edge in speed. Because quite often it is correct for UG to tap out early to develop it’s manabase, a tooth player with a fast hand can capitalize on that, and sneak an uncontested *impact spell* past the countermagic. That said, it is anything but a blowout, and the UG deck can easily manage to steal one.

Questions, comments, errors, arguments, and requests all welcome.

[<<RagingAscetic>>]

Bullseye! Perfect depiction of the matchup in my opinion.

It could also be taken into account how the players Sideboard for game3(if there is one). The UG player might put a couple of oxidizes back in if the tooth player manages to play a couple of Platinum Angels in game 2. Likewise, the Tooth player might take a few things out that might not be very useful after sideboarding the first time. Overall, great article. Maybe you really are broken.... hehe

[sneakyhomunculus]

Nice primer. How are those Ninphidian's working out for you? I would like to test them, but I don't have a lot of time at the moment.
I take that you have cut them for Serum Visions/T4K's, is the Ninphid' a good enough replacement?

[HKKID]

I've just begun testing ninphidian, and unfortunately do not have particularly solid data on it yet :redface:. That said, I definately like the looks of it better from a purely theoretical level.

Raging Ascetic: I really didn't want to cover game 3 re-sideboarding. The scope of possible choices and options (based on what happened game 2) is so incredibly HUGE that game 3 sideboarding choices basically warrents an article all by itself. But honestly... how many people are going to read an article about "Game 3 sideboarding options: UG control vs Tooth and Nail." Hence I probably won't be bothering to write an article on the topic any time soon.

[Sacred]

Nice! Although, you didn't really discuss Bribery for the SB of the U/G player? I'd like to get my hands on some NotDH, but until then, can you tell me this, are they a good replacement for visions? Wouldn't they get blocked alot?

[ButteBlues]

My Tooth and Nail is sooo seggsy...

Great article Travis, and I think it sums up the UG Matchup nicely.

[guasu]

I would very like too see a primer on T&N vs MonoU. I'm saying this cuz obviously I liked the approach done on this article.

This is my current decklist after reading the primer:

4 Hinder
4 Mana Leak
4 Condescend
3 Serum Visions
3 Echoing Truth

2 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Relic Barrier
4 Vedalken Shackles
2 March of The Machines

2 Kira, Great Class-Spinner
3 Ninja of the Deep Hours
2 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
1 Keiga, the Tide Star

2 Stalking Stones
2 Blinkmoth Nexus
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
19 Island

SB:
2 March of the Machines
2 Quash
2 Relic Barrier
2 Evacuation
3 Annul
4 Temporal Adept

[HKKID]

Sacred: thanks . As for your question: I didn't cover Bribery off the sideboard, because quite frankly I forgot to. However its quite bad. The biggest creature threat is Sundering Titan, and bribery does precious little to alleviate this situation.

As for Ninja, he DOES seem to get blocked quite a bit. As I said a few posts ago, I haven't done enough playtesting to have a rock solid opinion yet, but it seems like it's ok thus far.

[Machius]

nice article, the only complaint i have is with the u/g's sideboard but since as you've mentioned there are many different version out their it's not such a big deal. Personally though in u/g(unlike monoU) temporal adept doesn't cut it, the UUU is too harsh a cost especially since you want it down and working as quick as posible. the other options that you didn't discuss and are far superior(in my opinion) to the mountain blood moon strategy are the bribery/acquire option(steal their best tooth targets before they can get them out), the plow under option(getting rid of 2 urzatron pieces is nice and even with shuffle effects it generally stuffs up their draw for a turn at least) and finally thanks to BoK the Splinter option(because tooth has boseiju quash's usefullness is small, splinter however can remove tooth's threats from the game stopping darksteel collosus's shuffle or eternal witness recursion. it also can work against other decks with artifacts).

Just one more thing, most u/g decks i've seen tend to run some extra beatdown(mainly troll ascetics) in the SB for control matchups, and they could also help in this situation.

[IbeatTomGuevin]

Well just another comment on Ninphidian. I cant help but to notice that you have reverted back to the non echoing truth list. I feel that is a huge mistake, especially with red becoming popular. I guess I see how he essentially still lets you get multiple uses out of your witness and shamans but after that I feel like he will be chumped and his ability will be less effective.

I think turn 1 serum visions is a play too solid to pass up. It helps set up your next 2 turns, and especially helps to find a turn 2 elder, which you and I both know is key.

Still going with mountain/blood moon huh. Im still playing swamp/extraction mainly for its versatility.

[ButteBlues]

I tested Ninphidian quite a bit yesterday, and I love it... The card is so useful, whether it's turning a late-game STE into card advantage, or doing Witness tricks, the Ninja dominates!

My current List

10 Forest
10 Island
1 Mountain
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge

4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Kodama's Reach
4 Mana Leak
4 Hinder
3 Serum Visions
3 Ninja of the Deep Hours
4 Eternal Witness
3 Viridian Shaman
3 Echoing Truth
2 Oxidize
2 Meloku, the Clouded Mirror
2 Rude Awakening

Sideboard
3 Blood Moon (Tooth and Nail)
4 Relic Barrier (Affinity)
4 Quash (Tooth and Nail/Mirror/BG)
2 Oxidize (Affinity)
2 Engineered Explosives (Affinity; Likely to change)


Some notable exclusions included Vedalken Shackles and March of the Machines...

Shackles was too often being hit by Shamans, and I found that Echoing Truth tended to be more useful in general.

Also, the Blood Moon route is far superior to any other route... Not many decks are hurt by Cranial Extraction at all (as we've seen these past months) and CE comes out too late to really stick it to TnN for my tastes... Bribery and Plow Under, both being 5 mana and seeing play on turn 4 at the earliest are just hoping the Tooth player wasn't on the play...

As for the Ninphidian, I kept the early game power of Serum Visions as Ninphidian only really shines in the mid-game...

[<<RagingAscetic>>]

I still don't understand why you didn't include Bribery in your sideboard.... Shouldn't you counter the their first try at casting T&N? I like bribery better than extraction in a deck like this b/c it gives you an advantage instead of just taking a card out of their deck....... and you also don't have to splash another color post-SB. If you wanted a replacement for E-explosives this is where I would go.

[CrAzEd MiKe]

Very well done Travis... I really enjoyed the article a lot, and it was very informative. Keep up the good work! I'm going to start writing my own pieces too hopefully (time permitting of course)...