Novel Nunchaku

The fight clause is the part that prints tempo in TMT. Removal at common runs around two playable spells per color and most of it costs three or more (Stomped by the Foot, Bot Bashing Time, Dimensional Exile), so a card that arrives, pumps a creature, and trades it into something on the opposing board does work the format does not otherwise hand green at common. The math is friendly: the commons floor sits at 2/2s and 2/3s and 3/2s, and the +1/+1 means an attached 2/2 fights as a 3/3, clearing the 2/3 and 3/2 bodies that define the curve and surviving the brawl.

BG Food and GU Sneak want this most, but for different reasons. BG Food is grinding toward inevitability and treats the fight as a clean one-for-one that also props up a sacrifice-fodder body; GU Sneak is more tempo-greedy and cares that the swing lands a turn before the opponent stabilizes. Both reliably have a creature down by turn two and convert the Equipment into removal-plus-permanent on turn three. P1P4 to P1P6 in any green deck with a real creature base, climbing once you have a Bespoke Bō to lean on or two-drop legends that scale off the buff. Maindeck.

The honest limit is the one-shot. The reflexive fight fires on entry; the equip-three never refires it, so what you bank later is just a single buffed attacker that asks you to spend a full sorcery-speed turn relocating it. Against Shredder, Unrelenting or the mythic Turtle legends you needed to answer right away, that first fight is the entire card. Grounded for Life punishes the re-equip turn cleanly: tap out to move the Nunchaku, eat the white removal on the buffed creature, lose the tempo you just spent. Draftsim's 6 underweights how much three-mana conditional removal is worth in a format this slow.

The half-removal, half-pump split is what tells you where this lives. Three mana gets you a one-shot fight that resolves with the +1/+1 already applied, plus an Equipment that keeps sticking around to make the next creature trample over. That combination wants a commander whose creatures are already worth the bonus and whose deck wants to be attacking. Rishkar, Peema Renegade is a clean fit: a board of counter-carrying creatures means the fight target is usually bigger than it reads, and the trample matters on the swing back. Wilson, Refined Grizzly likes it for the opposite reason, since the equipped body becomes a single threat you want to push through, and the on-entry fight clears a blocker before combat.

This is Bracket 2 to 3 material. The fight is sorcery-speed-locked removal tied to the enter trigger, which is too slow and too conditional for Bracket 4-5 tables where removal needs to answer combo pieces at instant speed, and the equip tax is real friction the higher you climb. In casual creature-combat decks it earns its slot.

The honest comparison is Maul of the Skyclaves, which arrives attached and swings the board harder; this trades raw stats for the fight, which is removal Maul does not offer. Against pure removal like Prey Upon or Ram Through, you are paying two extra mana for a permanent that keeps working. As the eighth-or-so combat enabler in a Rishkar or Wilson list, that permanence is the argument. Watch the multiplayer read: fighting down one opponent's creature with three players at the table is the kind of small favor that earns you a turn of goodwill, or paints you as the player picking fights.

Expect a sub-$5 secondary price. Invisible in non-combat decks, which is most tables.

The natural target is the green removal-on-a-creature slot, the role that decks like Yawgmoth Combo lean on when they want to clear a blocker while developing the board. The incumbent there is not really an Equipment at all: it is the modal flexibility of cards like Fatal Push and the green-deck habit of running creature-based interaction such as Yawgmoth, Thran Physician himself, who eats a creature and draws while doing it. Against those, a three-mana sorcery-speed fight package that leaves a permanent stat boost is asking for too much setup. You need a creature already in play, you need it to survive the brawl, and you only get the fight once. Yawgmoth wants its removal to interact at instant speed and feed the engine; Novel Nunchaku does neither.

The other plausible home is an aggressive green creature deck along the lines of Domain Zoo, where the +1/+1 and trample read as a combat trick that happens to remove a blocker on the way in. But Zoo's pump-and-burn slot is held by cards that close games faster: a single Burning-Tree Emissary line or a Lightning Bolt to the face does more for three mana of investment than equipping up and fighting once.

Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play this season. The frontloaded fight is a genuinely clean piece of design, but Modern's removal slots are settled around instant-speed answers and reach, and a sorcery-speed Equipment that demands a board first is a downgrade against both incumbents it would need to displace.

Removal-on-a-stick for a green creature deck in Standard that wants its three-drop to clear a blocker and leave a body bigger, the kind of slot midrange green fills with bite spells when the better Equipment are spoken for. The fight fires once, so the value is front-loaded: a one-shot removal effect plus a permanent +1/+1 and trample. It is legal but has yet to register in tracked play this season, and in a green deck looking to interact at three mana, a clean removal spell usually does the job without asking you to find a creature to hold it.

Released this season, Novel Nunchaku is legal in Pioneer but has not registered in tracked tournament play so far. The honest read is structural rather than evidentiary: the format's green decks do not want this effect at this cost.

The deck that would seem to want a fight-on-entry Equipment is Mono-Green Devotion, but that archetype is not a creature-combat deck. Its plan runs through Cavalier of Thorns, Karn, the Great Creator, and the Llanowar Elves into Old-Growth Troll devotion curve, and it interacts with the board through Karn-fetched artifacts rather than through brawls. Three mana for a fight plus a stat anchor competes with the cards that actually advance that engine, and loses.

The other green shells are aggressive: Mono-Green Aggro and the Gruul builds want creatures that hit on curve and pump spells that close, not a three-mana removal Equipment that asks you to already have a creature on the table to attach to. The fight clause fires once and is gone, while the deck would rather spend three mana on a threat or on Embercleave's tempo. Boros and Mono-White aggro decks that lean on Equipment are not in green and would not touch this regardless.

There is no slot competition to map here because there is no slot. Pioneer's green decks have settled rosters, and a fight-stapled Equipment that fights at sorcery speed on a body you have to commit first does not improve any of them. The card needs a green creature deck built around equipping and brawling, and that deck does not exist in the current Pioneer map.

A 3-mana Equipment in a format where Swords to Plowshares exiles a creature for one mana and Lightning Bolt costs one. The fight clause is conditional removal that needs your own creature on the board first, and Vintage's removal slot is already solved at one mana with no setup. Green creature decks are not part of the equilibrium the Power Nine built. Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play.

A 3-mana Equipment whose removal half is a fight, in a format where Swords to Plowshares exiles anything for one mana and Lightning Bolt kills most of what matters for the same. The fight is conditional on having a creature already in play that outsizes the target, even with the +1/+1 factored in, and it pays the Force of Will tax at three mana while offering none of the reach or unconditional answer the format's removal demands. Legacy's green creature decks are not a tier presence to begin with, and the ones that exist would rather run Green Sun's Zenith into a real threat than spend three mana to brawl. Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play. Does not clear the bar.