Matchup Analysis - Rhinos 2024

Key Cards: Aid/Paladin, Urza’s Saga, Kaldra, Post-board: Surge, Drannith

Problem Cards: Subtlety, Force of Negation, Tishana’s Tidebinder, Flame of Anor, Leyline Binding & T3feri (in 4C) Post-board: Force of Vigor, Blood Moon, various sweepers like Brotherhood’s End

Objectives:

• Game 1, your entire plan is to get a hammer (and maybe a Spear) on a creature. Once it’s there, their only outs are Otawara and slowing you down with Ice. In 4C, they also have Binding and T3f, which are real considerations.
• The games where Rhinos wins are typically when they interact on turns 1-2, slam a cascader on turn 3 (or 2 with Gemstone Cavern). From there they can often keep us off-balance and close out the game. As such, you should be working to pressure them so they have to use their mana on things aside from jamming rhinos on 3.
  • Keep in mind that 2 reasonably-sized constructs are often enough to overpower 1-2 crashing footfalls, especially paired with a shadowspear. This means that we will often win if the game drags out.
• Their only reasonable outs game to a fast hammer are:
  • Multiple Cascades back-to-back
  • Otawara
  • Brazen Borrower
  • Leyline Binding
  • Boseiju
• Tishana’s Tidebinder creates an interesting dynamic in the matchup. For reference, here is the exact text on Tidebinder’s ability: “When Tishana's Tidebinder enters the battlefield, counter up to one target activated or triggered ability. If an ability of an artifact, creature, or planeswalker is countered this way, that permanent loses all abilities for as long as Tishana's Tidebinder remains on the battlefield.”
  • Key detail: TT will only reasonably “blank” your Equipment, Paladins, and Stoneforges. Any lands and/or enchantments will still retain all of their text.
  • Notable Triggers, and what happens if the fish stifles one:
    • Urza’s Saga: Keep in mind that TT’ing one Saga trigger will not prevent the other chapters from triggering.
      • Chapter 1: Your saga will never get to make mana.
      • Chapter 2: Your saga will never make constructs.
      • Chapter 3: You will not get to search, and the saga will still die.
    • Sigarda’s Aid: this will only stop the first aid trigger, your hammers still have all their text.
    • Equipping a Hammer for 0: The hammer will not equip, and it will lose all of its abilities (including the +10/+10)
    • Puresteel Palading Draw Trigger: The paladin will lose all of its abilities and you will not draw a card.
    • Stoneforge Search Trigger or Activation: The SFM will lose all of its abilities and you will not get to search/put in an equipment
    • Kaldra Compleat: If the “living weapon” trigger is countered, Kaldra will lose all of its abilities.
    • Inkmoth Nexus: This one is more complicated.
      • If they counter the initial activation, the inkmoth will simply not animate.
      • If they counter an inkmoth activation of an already-animated inkmoth (typically used to give it flying again with Hammer), then the inkmoth will lose all abilities, and once it becomes a land again, it will become a colorless land with no abilities (not even the mana ability).
  • Keep in mind that Surge stops things from targeting you and your permanents, but NOT abilities. This means that Tidebinder gets around surge.
  • You get to determine when tidebinder will have targets, so you can often choke their mana so long as they are not heavily pressuring you.
  • ***The biggest thing to note about TT is that you should always be aware of it, and that means you should potentially activate things like Saga/SFM at sorcery speed.
• Flame of Anor is a fine card, but if they don’t have a wizard in play (TT and/or mutavault), it is typically just a 3-mana 1-for-1. Be aware that it exists, but don’t overly stress about this one.
• If you ever get a Shadowspear and a Hammer on a creature, it is very unlikely for them to win. The huge life swing and almost unblockability means that they will likely just die.
• Sticking a Sigarda’s Aid is one of the strongest things you can do in the matchup, because it effectively turns off their tempo/countermagic plan, and allows you to pick your spot to “go for it”. Having an Aid in play also means that bouncing your hammers mid-combat is not a reasonable strategy.
• Keep in mind that while they have some powerful cards like Force of Vigor, their best tools against you often require 2-for-1’ing themselves. As they also need to hit land 3-4 on time, it can be very challenging for them to keep up on resources and deploy their own gameplan.
• Game 1 your Urza’s Saga makes for an excellent fair plan, as they will usually be larger than a rhinoceros, and provide a ton of value/pressure.
  • Additionally, leaning on end-step constructs means that they either waste their mana by passing out of fear from a surprise hammer, OR they tap out, leaving them open to a connection.
• Giver->SFM->Kaldra is often a very strong plan vs Rhinos, as they typically do not have much meaningful interaction for it, especially since the banning of Fury.
• Brazen Borrower: Keep in mind that if you don’t have to give Inkmoth Nexus flying after hammering it, you shouldn’t. Brazen Borrower can’t block non-fliers.
• Fire/Ice: especially with no memnites, Fire is rarely a 2-for-1. Ice is typically used as a way to tap down our land so we can’t stick a drannith on turn 2, or to tap down a large threat. As such, this means you should often put hammers onto creatures mid-combat after they have already been declared as attackers via Aid when given the option.
• Force of Vigor: When possible, only give them 2 good targets in the early game while still holding up surge of salvation. Going T1 Aid into turn 2 Saga without having surge up is just asking to get blown out by FoV.
• Subtlety/FoNegation: It is often difficult to suss out which they have in their hand game 1, so you typically have to play into it. The good news is that this is another 2-for-1.

SB Strategy and highlights: While cascade hatebears like Drannith are solid options, remember that they don’t close the door like against other cascade decks. Rhinos has a lot of tools to fight against a Drannith, and are reasonably soft to our primary gameplan. As such, you should focus more on having a good hand/gameplan rather than mulliganing aggressively towards Drannith Magistrate.

• Surge of Salvation protecting specific cards (Aid, Hammer, Saga, Drannith) from getting tagged by Force of Vigor or Fury.
• Lavinia/Drannith: These do similar things; both stop Crashing Footfalls. Lavinia also stops Subtlety/Forces, but is also much easier for them to kill (Dead//Gone and Bonecrusher). Drannith easier to cast and protect, but is less restricting to their available tools.
• Spell Pierce is a good card that can counter Rhinos, Blood Moon, or (sometimes) FoV, but is largely covered by Surge (since Hammer is the beatdown in the matchup). Pierce is a reasonable tool, but largely overrated in the MU. I like pierce a lot more vs the 4C version since it keeps T3f from coming down.
• Mana Tithe is also a beating currently since they play so many 3-mana interaction spells with the adoption of Flame of Anor and Tishana’s Tidebinder.
• Blood Moon can potentially be a way to get cheesed out of the game. As such, you should try to sniff out if they are going to Moon you and fetch accordingly.

TL;DR: Hammer em fast or force them 2-for-1 themselves until they don’t have resources. Saga Constructs can take over from there. Game 2/3 do your best to beat Force of Vigor, and you’re good to go.