Also your use of Mutagenic Growth as a Misstep has made me think of using it that way in Merfolk. To often I die to pyroclasm or Bolt/Snap/Bolt on a lord – stopping that cycle at the cost of 2 life seems like an ideal solution to me!

Hi Jordan, just wanted to say I am really inspired by all the brewing you do. Monkey Grow is the deck i’ve always wanted to play, but Tarmogoyf has always been out of my price range. My question in regards to this deck though is why run Nactl over the new Dryad? Both are one mana 3/3s and nactl is forcing you to take more damage from your lands. Perhaps it is more for the other spells you get to play like Path/Helix? I think my favourite of your decks is Temur Traverse so I shall try playing it with the new Bedlam Reveller.

For the record, I built Temur Delver many months after I first built Counter-Cat. This is a much older deck, and plays very differently. It’s not like I decided to throw four Nacatls into Temur Delver.

Nacatl lacking evasion matters a lot less with 4x Path and 4x Mutagenic. If you’re hungry for answers now, check out the link to the MTGS threat in the comments above, which addresses each of your concerns. Otherwise, just stay tuned and I’ll deliver some data-driven content on this deck in the coming weeks; for this article, I just wanted to introduce the deck (hence the article title).

Great, me too! And it’s nice to hear you’re on my side 😛

For those that don’t know, Kathal is one of the players I designed Counter-Cat with some years ago. Kathal, I don’t know what your metagame looks like, but I’ve been very happy with this list lately. I know your testing yields different results from mine and am always happy to hear more about your experiences with the deck. As for your claims:

1. 18 lands: I auto-mull just about every hand with four or more lands in a blind game. That’s led me to test 17 lands countless times and I always keep coming back to 18. Why? This deck really struggles when it doesn’t make its second land drop, and it gets even better when it makes its third and fourth, thanks to Snapcaster Mage. 18 lands also lets us run Huntmaster scot-free out of the board. And finally, it gives us room for basic Forest, which is one of the most important lands in the deck. Against aggressive strategies like Burn, Forest is crucial for deploying multiple creatures per turn without taking too much damage. I also think you underestimate Blood Moon in Modern. Having just a Forest and a pile of Mountains lets us navigate under a Moon, whereas having an Island won’t let us do anything. Moon really wrecks this deck if we don’t have access to green.

2. 2 Mandrills: This card is really good. It’s especially good in this deck. I’ve tried three more than once and have flooded on Mandrills each time. If I’m not mistaken, don’t you play 3 Sleight of Hand and a Faithless Looting in your list? Those cards make the third Mandrills a lot better, but I simply can’t support one in this build. Also keep in mind that I have more threats over the course of a game vs. removal-heavy decks, since Bolt protects my creatures, so the third Mandrills is less important.

3. Counter suite: I started with one Growth, then went to two, then went immediately to four, and haven’t looked back. I just always want to draw it. When I always want to draw a card, I play four of it. Sure, it gets boarded out against decks without Bolts. But decks without Bolts have a really hard time beating NacatlDelver.dec regardless.
As for Remand, I love it on a Scepter, but other than that I can see it being a Mana Leak. I said in the article that I’m not sure about the counterspell configuration. All I know for sure at this point is that I want four Growths, a pair of two-mana counterspells, and at least 2 Spell Pierce in the main.

4. Huntmaster: I actually don’t think Huntmaster is slow vs. Burn, and really love him in that matchup. Running three of them lets me have a highly reliable Bolt their guys, then drop Huntmaster plan that’s been great for me in testing. I also love Huntmaster against attrition decks and with the four Muta Growths main, since he’s a great target for them.
As you know, I tested Send to Sleep when Origins came out, and was really impressed with the card. But it’s only stellar during board stalls, which Counter-Cat doesn’t have that many of thanks to Path-Snap-Path. Huntmaster is also good during board stalls, but since he has so much applicability elsewhere (vs. attrition and small aggro decks), I prefer him for now.
For what it’s worth, the fourth Helix also becomes less important with three Huntmasters. That said, going forward, I’m paying a lot of attention to both the Huntmaster and Scepter plans in the sideboard to see if I need to cut those numbers for anything else to solve specific problems.

Lastly, I want to say that even though we’ve been working on this deck for more than a year, it’s not optimized. That we can have so much discussion about the card choices shows us that there’s still a lot to learn and tighten up. That’s why comments like “it’s bad, I tested it” can be unproductive. Take Abzan Company matchup, for example: I also tested it, and actually found it to be quite good. Granted, I had Huntmaster/Scepter to help out in Games 2 and 3, which pulled a lot of weight. I just want you to acknowledge that there are many paths right now. It’s pretty tough to nail down a best list for Counter-Cat, since we have so many options available to us in four colors. But I won’t give up, and surely, neither will you!

Greetings 8)

Domain Zoo is actually not a big leap. Etymologically, I think it’s the closest deck we have to Counter-Cat in Modern. In fact, the original version of this deck sometimes played Tribal Flames in the main with a Watery Grave. I ended up favoring Boros Charm, since Path answers big threats and Charm is more versatile in “Phase One” (protect a creature, get in a lot of attacks).

Some strengths of Counter-Cat over Domain Zoo:
– We’re better against unfair decks. Having eight Delvers is huge here, and the mainboard permission obviously wins us lots of games vs. combo decks. I’ve not know Domain Zoo decks to play any permission main, but to sometimes run Negate in the side.
– We’re not soft to Pyroclasm. Hierarch into Geist decks are very soft to Pyroclasm. One major upshot of this bullet point is we get to run Pyroclasm ourselves, and it’s one of the greatest sideboard cards in Modern IMO, especially in a deck that’s so good of trading one-for-one with threats (via Path, Helix, Bolt, etc.). Clasm gives us a way to also answer decks that go wide, like Gruul Zoo.
– Our manabase is a lot more stable. Sure, we only run 18 lands, but as I say in the article, we can operate under Blood Moon with just a Forest. The Siege Rhino/Geist deck has a way harder time doing this.
– We get to play a lot more real cards. Decks with so many three- and four-drops have to not only play those cards, but run extra lands and mana dorks to make sure they hit the board. All that mana severely cuts into the “actual card” count, softening the deck to grindy midrange strategies that want to trade resources. In my experience, Domain Zoo ends up flooding out against these decks if it can’t quickly land a Geist and ride it to victory. I think the Nacatl-Muta plan is a lot better here, not to mention it lets us play just 18 lands and therefore draw into a wealth of options during a game.

In that case I’ll wait for your future articles. My issue is not that you did not address my concerns, but that I was not satisfied with the way they were addressed.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m rooting for you. Any deck where I can sleeve up nacatls and remands sounds like a great time. It’s just that I am very wary that it can succeed in the hyper aggressive world of today’s modern.

Either way, I hope to be proven wrong in the coming weeks

I’ve always enjoyed your decks. I’m not good at playing them, but I like the strategy.

If you’re genuinely interested, Counter-Cat’s storied history is pretty well documented in this thread. Read through and you’ll find answers to all your questions, or just wait a couple weeks for some more data-backed articles about the deck. A lot of your claims were directly addressed in this very article, though, so I won’t go too deep into answering these concerns right now.

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/deck-creation-modern/573218-counter-cat-nacatl-delver

nice to see, that you finally published that darn Counter-Cat article ^^

So, some input (since you know already my opinion on several things):

MD:
1) Especially with 3 Probes, you do not need the 18th land (aka the basic Forest). If you really want it, I would consider to run it in the SB (same reason why you run the basic mountain in the Monkey Grow Sb atm). If you insist to run the basic Forest in the MD, pls run that darn Faithless Looting.

2) Only 2 Mandrills IS atm a mistake, you really need that Trample effect, especially vs Abzan CoCo (which is not a good match-up btw, it is decent, but not good) OR you could just run a Rancor MD, which I do atm (and it is awesome).

3) Regarding the countersuite, yes I can understand, that the Mutangenics are basically Mana Leaks/Mental Misteps vs Bolts and creatures, but than again, that Remand is bad. Trust me, Mana Leak is especially in a shell which you are currently playing waay better. Also, I would switch the 4th Muta for the 3rd Leak, since the 4th Muta is not that good (I tested it last year August).

4) Not a fan of the SB. Huntmaster IS bad and just slow. Send to Sleep does the “same” job but better (it is only worse against Burn and for Burn Huntmaster is either way really slow). I also miss that 4th Helix in the SB. It offers so much against way to many decks.

Greetings,
Kathal

If there are no unfavorable matchups, why aren’t other people playing it?

My guess is because there *are* unfavorable matchups. A T3 blood moon shuts off nacatl and locks you out of your spells. Sure, you have isochron scepter and negate, but you can’t reasonably except to get them on time in games two and three.

And how exactly is the burn or Zoo matchup good? You said yourself that you start at 12 life not infrequently. Two MB helixes and one in the side is NOT enough to make a difference.

At this point I’m starting to think you just create a scenario where you draw everything you need and say “I have an opening hand of 2-3 lightning helix and a snapcaster g1-3, ergo the burn matchup is favorable.”

Now, modern Nexus holds itself to a higher standard than that, but unless you explain why a deck that starts at 12 life has a favorable burn matchup, you can’t say it has a favorable burn matchup.

Saying you have helixes to offset lifeloss is not enough (especially when you play only two) to back up such a claim.

This isn’t some new brew – I’ve been working on Counter-Cat for over a year now. I figured Temur Delver was strictly better since the Treasure Cruise ban, as my testing has also suggested. But so far, the inclusion of Mutagenic Growth seems to make this deck viable.

I totally agree with you—brews need to have a purpose. But there are reasons to play Counter-Cat over Temur Delver. Here’s how I’ve been faring against the top 10 decks in Modern.

Favorable:
Burn
Abzan Company
Affinity
Infect
Merfolk
Scapeshift

Decent:
Jund
Jeskai Control
RG Tron
Gruul Zoo

Unfavorable:
N/A

The hardest matchups are Living End and Dredgevine, which don’t show up a lot lately. Interestingly, the three you predicted would be bad matchups are actually some of this deck’s best. Temur Delver struggles against midrange decks like Jund and Abzan, and against big creature decks like Zoo. Counter-Cat shores up those weaknesses in exchange for what amounts to a few points against Tron (also solvable with a couple more two-mana counterspells), and that’s why I think it has game going forward.

I actually had something like this in the article initially, but I decided to save it for later to keep the article more focused, Since I’ve turned my attention almost fully to this deck, you can expect some more in-depth analyses of its role in the metagame in the near future. In this article, I mostly wanted to introduce Counter-Cat to the Nexus readership and address some of the FAQ’s I’ve received about it since I first developed it, including how the mana works and how the deck plays.

I think issue is that this author brews just to brew. Anyone can jam a handful of cards together and call it a deck, but tell me why this deck/brew could be well positioned in the meta. Otherwise, its just another deck that gets crushed by Abzan CoCo, Tron, and Burn. There seems to be good thought into making it a well rounded deck, but nothing about it being competitive.

A brew should have a purpose, right? I’d be much more impressed if there was a section that explains why Counter Cat has game against the top decks. Frankly, i dont think it does.