My Favourite Nissa PvP Deck

watashi101

In the recent 1.3.1 patch, with no doubt everyone should use a Level 50 PW to gain max efficiency. That only leaves one question, how to build a fast deck.
From 1.3 I have tested Nissa deck could be very fast as she has 2 best cards for doing cascades, and the creature quality is also good. However in 1.3 the chance of crashing when doing cascades is so high that I actually cannot win half of the match . Luckily it's fixed now, and the updated pvp system also helped Nissa as the objectives now is to calling creatures out asap, which Nissa is very good at.

My suggested Nissa deck is here:

In text:
4 Creatures
Herald of the Pantheon
Outland Colossus
Skysnare Spider
Dwynen, Gilt-Leaf Daen

2 Spells
Animist's Awakening
Helm of the Gods

4 Support
Nissa's Pilgrimage
Brawler's Plate
Sword of the Animist
Zendikar's Roil

I know that in Panda's Card Tier List, Zendikar's Roil is C Tier. But in my PvP games, it always survives for long enough to call out 4-8 2/2 elementals, which is already good enough for it's cost. Nissa's Pilgrimage and Animist's Awakening is great to help a 4+green match, so you don't really have to worry about the chance. My best shot is calling out 7 pairs of them. You can also use Nissa's Nature's Bounty to raise the chance. In my games I rarely use the 2nd ability, as I am always short of cards but not firing powers.

Other cards are quite straight forward. Cheap Supports aided by Herald, then Helm of the Gods on the Reach creatures, then enjoy the win. With the best cascading chance among all PW and the low mana cost cards, Nissa can easily dominate the board even against Jace bounce or Liliana discard.

On average this deck can win in 6 turns against PW with 10+ levels lower, though I don't have a chance to match a Lv50 Jace/Chandra for comparison.

Unknown

My concern would be that, without Somberwald Alpha, your Berserker would sink too much into killing creatures instead of the PW. Between Skysnare and Dwynen you have enough blocking to soak damage and kill creatures without wasting your turn(s).

watashi101

kore wrote:

My concern would be that, without Somberwald Alpha, your Berserker would sink too much into killing creatures instead of the PW. Between Skysnare and Dwynen you have enough blocking to soak damage and kill creatures without wasting your turn(s).

That's true. Berserker is not an necessary ability here. I added Brawler's Plate for it's cheap costs and the +2/+2 (Sigil often only does +1/+1). Sad that there are no better supports available for Nissa.

Unknown

If you want to use sigil then don't cast so many creatures.

Sometimes it is more efficient to hold on to your creatures and only play one at a time, even if you do fill it up.

With sigil and sword you are at +5/+5 already, so even caterpillar has its day with that.

Brawler's plate is still a serviceable card, I just simply dislike berserker.

But helm is worth it to put as many supports as you can. Helm is actually way TOO powerful, much, much better than starfield of nyx which is really hilarious. Oh well, dunno if devs will realize. I've started using it in pretty much every deck, since almost every planeswalker (aside from Chandra) has very good supports.

Roil might be much better now with the nissa's pilgrimage buff and animists awakening causing many more cascades, but the fact that it is on green itself still hurts.

Hard to really say because I don't play green much.

Unknown

I love your deck. I would switch the plate for a throwing knife. 2 fewer mana and still +2/+2
And yes I love the helmet too. Especially on those reach creatures of yours.

Unknown

Throwing Knife is a +2/+0, not +2/+2.

Unknown

kore wrote:

Throwing Knife is a +2/+0, not +2/+2.

You are right. My bad.

Unknown

Here's an insanely fast Nissa deck I have been running:

Creatures-
Elvish Visionary
Honored Hierarch
Herald of the Pantheon
Skysnare Spider
Dwynen
Outland Colossus
Woodland Bellowed

Spells-
Reclaim
Animist's Awakening

Support-
Elemental Bind

This deck is kind of nuts in that it allows one to chain almost their whole hand onto the battlefield at a very early turn. Despite its inconsistencies, it is very fast and fun.

Unknown

What is insanely fast?
I see people doing 5 points every 2 to 3 minutes. That's insane in my opinion.

I don't see why someone would put reclaim into their deck. Even when it's beneficial in some way, others will benefit even more from you using that spell. If you play against ai with reclaim in deckyou cannot lose. And why should I help others making easy points?

Unknown

Reclaim is explosive, especially if your Elvish Visionary hits on on of those 3 green mana transformations, then that reclaim nets you 9 mana. It allows you to chain multiple creatures and cards together with Animist's Awakening, which is both fast and fun. That's the reason it is in the deck. I dont really care about giving other people easy wins.

VacaNeon

I would like to know how many points you can farm per hour with this deck after 1.31 patch.

watashi101

VacaNeon wrote:

I would like to know how many points you can farm per hour with this deck after 1.31 patch.

Best shot is 2 hours for 135 pts, that's roughly 13 matches per hour. It's not rare to win a match in 2 minutes including the loading time.

fox1342

Hard_Casting wrote:

Here's an insanely fast Nissa deck I have been running:

Creatures-
Elvish Visionary
Honored Hierarch
Herald of the Pantheon
Skysnare Spider
Dwynen
Outland Colossus
Woodland Bellowed

Spells-
Reclaim
Animist's Awakening

Support-
Elemental Bind

This deck is kind of nuts in that it allows one to chain almost their whole hand onto the battlefield at a very early turn. Despite its inconsistencies, it is very fast and fun.

I've a similar sort of deck, zendicar, awakening, bellower, hangerback etc, but without the defence I end up taking too much damage - I couldn't play for 2 hours as I'd run out of heal.

I don't own the fun ones though. I'd love Hierarch.

mlktws

Nerimos wrote:

What is insanely fast?
I see people doing 5 points every 2 to 3 minutes. That's insane in my opinion.

I don't see why someone would put reclaim into their deck. Even when it's beneficial in some way, others will benefit even more from you using that spell. If you play against ai with reclaim in deckyou cannot lose. And why should I help others making easy points?

If you say Reclaim prevents you from losing, why not use it? How will others benefit more from you using it? Unless I missed something, you only ever play against AI. PVP is against the other person's deck, not the other player, right? So there's no one on the other end to benefit from the supposed downside.

Paired with Elvish Visionary or Llanowar Empath, there is no real downside to using it, since you are essentially trading a 1/1 or 2/2 for something more useful.

EldrosKandar

Hi, long time lurker, first time poster here.

Until now I've concentrated on Story Mode, but now with the BfZ update coming next week, I want to try out PvP so that I will be able to complete my collection more quickly.

Issue is: I don't have most of the rares that are used in those decks, and the cards and mechanics are so much different than paper MtG that I am quite lost as to what could be good alternatives. Until now I've constructed my deck with Pandabear's Tier list as guideline and it is doing fine against the AI, but I'm afraid I will be decimated against other players.

At the time, those are the cards in the OP's deck that I also got:

Brawler's Plate
Nissa's Pilgrimage
Animist's Awakening

Other rares and "good cards" that I have would be

Conclave Naturalists
Dwynen's Elite
Honored Hierarch
Mantle of Webs (got it recently, didn't test it yet)
Somberwald Alpha
Undercity Troll

Are those good enough for PvP? What are the good options when one is on the budget?

Unknown

mlktws wrote:

Nerimos wrote:

What is insanely fast?
I see people doing 5 points every 2 to 3 minutes. That's insane in my opinion.

I don't see why someone would put reclaim into their deck. Even when it's beneficial in some way, others will benefit even more from you using that spell. If you play against ai with reclaim in deckyou cannot lose. And why should I help others making easy points?

If you say Reclaim prevents you from losing, why not use it? How will others benefit more from you using it? Unless I missed something, you only ever play against AI. PVP is against the other person's deck, not the other player, right? So there's no one on the other end to benefit from the supposed downside.

Paired with Elvish Visionary or Llanowar Empath, there is no real downside to using it, since you are essentially trading a 1/1 or 2/2 for something more useful.

That's the point, when I'm playing against the AI in PvP, I am playing against the deck of every other player, including yours that has Reclaim in it. Great! Now, when the AI plays that Woodland Bellower or Outland Colossus and has mana to spare to cast that Reclaim you included in your deck I don't have to face your beat-stick creature because the AI is stupid when it comes to Reclaim.

fox1342

EldrosKandar wrote:

Hi, long time lurker, first time poster here.

Until now I've concentrated on Story Mode, but now with the BfZ update coming next week, I want to try out PvP so that I will be able to complete my collection more quickly.

Issue is: I don't have most of the rares that are used in those decks, and the cards and mechanics are so much different than paper MtG that I am quite lost as to what could be good alternatives. Until now I've constructed my deck with Pandabear's Tier list as guideline and it is doing fine against the AI, but I'm afraid I will be decimated against other players.

At the time, those are the cards in the OP's deck that I also got:

Brawler's Plate
Nissa's Pilgrimage
Animist's Awakening

Other rares and "good cards" that I have would be

Conclave Naturalists
Dwynen's Elite
Honored Hierarch
Mantle of Webs (got it recently, didn't test it yet)
Somberwald Alpha
Undercity Troll

Are those good enough for PvP? What are the good options when one is on the budget?

It's not true PvP - the AI plays against you, just using decks that humans have created. It's pretty stupid so you can win most games even with an average deck. If you've completed many of the story crystal challenges you'll be fine.