Legacy is a format that is all about efficiency. Decks like Delver of Secrets and Tendrils of Agony combo decks epitomize this, featuring only a handful of cards that cost over one mana. With many decks having the potential to win or assemble a dominating board presence as early as the first or second turn, there’s no time to mess around with cards that aren’t brutally efficient. Even the premier control deck, Miracles, is mostly built around answers that cost one- and two-mana. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t decks that want to go a little bigger. Nic Fit has always been a midrange variant that has enough efficiency disruption to fight combo and big enough creatures and spells to overwhelm opposing creature-based strategies. Let’s take a look at jbone2016’s take on the archetype:

Abzan Nic Fit ? Legacy | jbone2016, 5-0 Legacy League

• Creatures (16)
• 1 Baneslayer Angel
• 1 Dragonlord Dromoka
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Gaddock Teeg
• 1 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
• 1 Scavenging Ooze
• 1 Siege Rhino
• 1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
• 1 Thragtusk
• 2 Deathrite Shaman
• 2 Tireless Tracker
• 3 Veteran Explorer

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 1 Garruk Relentless
• 1 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad

• Spells (21)
• 1 Painful Truths
• 1 Sylvan Library
• 1 Vindicate
• 2 Abrupt Decay
• 2 Sensei's Divining Top
• 3 Pernicious Deed
• 3 Swords to Plowshares
• 4 Cabal Therapy
• 4 Green Sun's Zenith

• Lands (22)
• 3 Forest
• 2 Plains
• 3 Swamp
• 1 Karakas
• 1 Phyrexian Tower
• 1 Scrubland
• 2 Savannah
• 3 Bayou
• 3 Verdant Catacombs
• 3 Windswept Heath

• Sideboard (13)
• 1 Celestial Purge
• 1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
• 1 Krosan Grip
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Sorin, Grim Nemesis
• 1 Toxic Deluge
• 1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
• 2 Carpet of Flowers
• 2 Ethersworn Canonist
• 2 Surgical Extraction

Buy This Deck

The key interaction in this deck is Veteran Explorer plus Cabal Therapy. Green Sun's Zenith gives you access to seven copies of Veteran Explorer while Cabal Therapy gives you a combination of disruption and an uncounterable sacrifice outlet for Veteran Explorer. Sure, your opponent can counter Cabal Therapy, but you’ll always get to sacrifice your Veteran Explorer. This deck plays a full eight basics, where most decks in Legacy play between zero and three. This means that you are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the ability to grab extra basics, and can use this to cast giant monsters that can overwhelm whatever efficient things your opponents are trying to do.

The rest of the deck is a combination of efficient and versatile answers, card advantage, and powerful haymakers. The removal is largely what you’d expect – Abrupt Decay, Vindicate, Pernicious Deed, and Swords to Plowshares – and it’s hard to argue with these effects as the best catch-all answers to permanents in the format. The card advantage is a little more interesting since the deck has been picking up a number of tools in recent sets. Sure, there are the classics like Sylvan Library and Sensei's Divining Top, but the deck has also picked up Painful Truths, Nissa, Vastwood Seer, and Tireless Tracker. Tireless Tracker is the card that’s most exciting, since you get to play not only fetchlands, but also Veteran Explorerto help generate huge numbers of clues. Other decks in Legacy might not have the requisite mana to continue developing their board and also crack clues, but that’s certainly not a problem for Nic Fit.

Last, there’s the creature base. The real edge that this deck gets is that its threats are positively overwhelming. Threats like Sigarda, Host of Herons is resilient to every commonly played removal spell in the format outside of Terminus. Dragonlord Dromoka shuts off opposing countermagic. Can you even imagine a Temur Delver deck beating a resolved Baneslayer Angel? But it’s not just giant monsters. Green Sun's Zenith gives you the ability to play versatile and hateful creatures like Deathrite Shaman, Gaddock Teeg, Eternal Witness, and more. You even have Siege Rhino to sneak in the last few points of damage if your opponent is able to stabilize.

This deck gets to play an awesome combination of ramp spells, disruption and back it up with awesome Creatures and Planeswalkers as haymakers. If you’re looking to play a Legacy deck that’s more reminiscent of midrange decks in Standard or Modern, this may well be the deck for you.