I can’t stand it any more. In the past few weeks, I’ve seen dozens of articles about Tooth and Nail, each dubbing it the best deck in Standard. Tooth had secured plenty of Nationals spots to players from around the world at this funny little tournament called “Regionals.”
I saw plenty of unorthodox Tooth lists at Regionals. Some were splashing for black for the raw power of Cranial Extraction, while others opted to splash white for Circle of Protection: Red. Me? I will never add a second color to the Tooth deck.
Don’t get me wrong – they obviously shine when you have the right card in the correct situation – but for me, going mono-color is still better than adding a color into it. Example, if you’re adding black for Cranial, I’m pretty sure you don’t have the space for Creeping Mold, and I don’t think that Creeping Mold would be any worse in action when you compare it to Cranial Extraction. As Dan Paskins says, people always have The Fear and they think the only way out is by adding another color, despite the fact that it’s obviously wrong.
And even some of the mono-green builds had gone the wrong way in terms of speed and strategy, so let me make it clear: Chrome Mox is truly awful in a TNN deck. Everyone knows that speeding up a turn is good, but not every deck is capable to fully utilize the power of Mox appropriately.
Others said that they boarded out the Tooth engine for a package of creatures and land destruction spells on the board when they faced the mirror… and they are so wrong.
Now let me present to you my latest Troll and Nail innovation: it’s been tweaked to survive the current metagame, as the metagame has gone through a lot of changes since I first used Troll and Nail in the Invitational. Here’s the list:
Creatures (15)
- 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
- 4 Eternal Witness
- 1 Sundering Titan
- 1 Duplicant
Lands (21)
Spells (24)
- 4 Sensei's Divining Top
- 3 Plow Under
- 4 Tooth and Nail
- 3 Kodama's Reach
- 2 Oblivion Stone
- 4 Reap and Sow
- 4 Sylvan Scrying
Sideboard
You must be wondering: is this decklist correct? Yes, it is. The list seems very unorthodox because I only played a total of eleven ‘Trons instead of the complete package of twelve. The reason is simple: I want a sufficient amount of green sources in my deck. I had found out that I often boarded into the aggro plan against every other non-Tooth matchup, as it just seems better. When you take the expensive spells out, you will often find that Forests are much valuable the ‘Trons. You can keep hands without any ‘Tron, but you it’s hard keeping hands without Forest.
After my victory in the Invitational, I built a similar version on my MODO account and started playing with it in eight-man tournaments… Then I realized I was in the Stone Age in MODO, when almost every other Tooth player had either better acceleration or more copies of maindecked Plow Unders. I wasn’t winning much, obviously. In fact, I was losing tickets in the long run. I knew I have to do something about it if I want to make a run in those Constructed Queues.
I always lost to any mono-green decks out there in MODO, and I didn’t understand why. They had Plow, Eternal Witness, and Sensei’s Divining Top… But so did I. We had almost identical creatures after sideboard, but still I was fighting a losing battle.
After I had lost many, many tickets to those mono-green decks, I began to realize why they were winning: Speed. They had Birds of Paradise; I didn’t. Their best draw could be a turn 3 Plow Under, while mine could only muster a turn 4 Plow Under. Then I realized the importance of Birds of Paradise in any mirror green matchup…. and Troll and Nail was no exception. The only way to fight Birds is either to remove them or you play them yourself. I choose to give myself a chance to cast the game-ending Plow Under on turn 3. The matchup soon started to improve. That gave me a decent game against them, changing the match to “whoever starts first, wins. Always.” And now, I always win regardless who starts in the mirror, merely because I have speed advantage.
I actually read a Mox and Nail article posted few days ago in here; believe it or not, you can actually go wrong with just pure speed. In this case, opting to play with Mox is definitely wrong. TNN is actually a combo deck, with a touch of creatures and land destruction spells on the board to add flexibility and fight the hate that your opponent will be bringing in game 2 and 3.
First of all, Mox doesn’t interact well with the whole setup of TNN. You need an appropriate amount of land searchers (and of course Tooth and Nail itself) to win the game in Game 1. The whole deck is packed with combo pieces and artifacts – which, of course, cannot fed the Mox. I can’t even see what card you would want to remove to a Mox.
It might be better than Birds in the Red matchup, since Birds die easily… But although your Birds won’t be surviving, your opponent is just trading a card for a card, as opposed to the two-card loss from a shattered Mox. Thus, Birds is still better than Mox despite its vulnerability to burn.
In TNN, Birds is pure gold. Why would you give up an important card to accelerate if you can do it without giving up a card? If you’re a Red Sligh deck, I can understand the importance of Mox in the deck. The thing is, you are playing with the color that makes acceleration the easiest, so why bother playing with the bad accelerators if you can cast the good ones?
There was another article where the author stated that he boarded out his Tooth engine for his whole sideboard, which was comprised of cheap creatures and land destruction. Extra land destruction is always nice – but not the cheap creatures. They will never win you a game in the mirror.
In the mirror, each turn is precious. You will never cast a Troll Ascetic or Iwamori should your hand contain any land destruction spells. It’s about searching lands and destroying lands in the mirror, and the one who comes out on top of that wins. Your Troll may attack for four turns in a row… but your opponent can still turn the game around with a single Tooth and Nail cast at eight life. Iwamori can end games within five turns (including the turn you cast him), but your opponent will most likely cast a Reap and Sow or Plow Under on you, then end the games few turns later with a Tooth.
The Tooth mirror is simple: either you accelerate into a Tooth, or you destroy lands to prevent your opponent’s Tooth. If you failed to do this better than your opponent, you lose. Luck is always involved in that you need to draw the right cards in the right situation…. But we are not here to complain about how your lucky opponent drew all his Plows. We are here to prevent your opponent from getting lucky – and in order to do that, you have to play with the right cards.
You might discover my sideboard only contains a single Creeping Mold and the fourth Plow Under for the mirror match… And you must be curious about that. The problem is in the main deck; it has a very limited amount of redundant cards to take out for additional land destruction cards from the board. Besides the two obvious Oblivion Stones that will be swapping with the Mold and Plow, I can’t see what else I can take out – since then every other card I will be taking out is as good as what I am boarding in. Since I can’t afford to sideboard any more cards for the mirror, I added more cards for the Red matchup, since it’s so bad. Those cards are Oxidize and Naturalize, which I’ll explain shortly.
Against a Red opponent, you don’t expect to win much in game 1. They have everything good against you; Slith, Zo-Zu, Molten Rains, and more are all excellent cards to stifle TNN’s game plan. And there are so many varieties of Red out there that you will never find the exact version twice! Some play with Jinxed Choker, some are more land destruction-focused, and some play pure burn (like Osyp’s deck).
The key against all red decks is learning how to survive. Game 1 is pretty much an uphill battle, so I won’t go into too much detail; you don’t have a whole lot of room to maneuver. You need cheap, efficient cards to stay alive, because your creatures are better then theirs anyway. The answer? Enter Naturalize and Oxidize.
Originally, my list had none of them, since I thought Creeping Mold would serve the same purpose… But I was totally wrong. Creeping Mold takes up your whole turn to delay your opponent’s development. In return, you slowed yourself in the process… And then they beat you because their cards are cheaper and faster than yours. The Oxidize is there to kill Mox, Blinkmoth Nexus, Jinxed Choker, and Sword of Fire and Ice. Naturalize serves the same purpose; it costs one more mana, but comes with the option of killing Genju of the Spires as well. These are better than Plow Under or Creeping Mold after you board the creatures in.
Arc-Slogger, on the other hand, remains as a problem. I have to be realistic about the dangers of going mono-green: turn 3 Arc-Slogger can end games as quick as you can blink your eyes. Circle of Protection: Red will help, giving you potential outs – but trust me, I’ve lost games to Slogger when I had a CoP: Red in play.
CoP: Red is awesome against the heavy burn version, but it isn’t very efficient when you’re facing the creature-heavy version of Red. Your opponent still has access to Nexus and Jinxed Choker, and the amount of mana you have to reserve for the Circle does not put you in a winning position. The only way you can pull it off is by casting your Troll or Iwamori, then controlling their mana sources with cheap cards like Oxidize or Naturalize. Their Blinkmoth Nexi always attack, because no one plays Oxidize…. but I do. Slowing them a turn at a cost of one mana is the equivalent of casting Shock on a Birds of Paradise.
After sideboarding, you still have around two Plows in your deck, since sometimes Plow can be very painful for them as they never get to cast their 4/5. Remember, your plan against the Red deck is to race them. It might sound stupid, but I’ve tested enough to know that it’s the right way to go. You can afford to race them if you play with those cheap artifact removal, as the cheap removal allows you to destroy their stuff while dropping threats at the same time. In other terms, you have to play a tempo game with them, where life is more important than card advantage.
In every matchup, there are cards that shine. You are afraid of your opponent’s best cards, and he’s afraid of yours… And in this case, the Red man’s afraid of your Troll and Iwamori. He’s also afraid that he invested five mana for a Sword-and-equip, only to have you respond with a one-mana Oxidize.
There are some Rats and mono-blue hanging around, but they are not as threatening as your mirror and Red decks. This build is certainly weaker against Rats and mono-blue due to the lack of Mindslaver and additional Oblivion Stones.
I do, however, agree with those articles out there about Mindslaver. It does not belong in the current TNN anymore. It is slow, and what matters most in TNN is speed. Sometimes, paying ten mana and a card for doing almost nothing significant is pretty heart-breaking, despite the fact that there are times where it single-handedly won you the game…. But overall, Plow Under is still better in most circumstances. Thus the more efficient Plow Under has taken its slot in the main deck.
As the metagame shaped up, you pretty much knew the best and the most-played deck around your area. Armed with your knowledge, you should be tweaking your deck to beat the more popular ones instead of preparing for a large and unknown field. Preparing your deck for a lot of different matchups is a great method in an unknown metagame… but you’ll also have the least amount of good cards against a specific (and popular) deck because you designed your deck to be versatile. There is definitely a price to pay here.
Conversely, if you tuned your deck to beat a few specific decks, you weakened some other matchups where you didn’t prepare adequately. Both ways have their pros and cons; you have to decide for yourself.
It’s always good to play your game confidently without any fear, and I’m sure you can play much better without The Fear bothering you. Sometimes good play and right timing may just overcome the dreaded Fear Card.
Hope you all had a nice time reading this article. Until next time, there’s No Fear Attached.