So I guess Delver decks just don't need Draw-3s! Case closed! Snapcaster is more than enough!Originally Posted by Koby
Congrats on the finish, really looking forward to the article!
I think the problem with Wasteland and Stifle is that you can't always put them in the graveyard when you want. Maybe they don't crack that fetch and maybe you're playing against a deck with basics, in those situations fetches + cantrips / burn are better at enabling Pyromancer / Swiftspear and Cruise. This list is more aggro oriented than the the standard non PoP list I think.
I might be wrong, but I think you probably want PoP if you're playing GG.
The Aggro approach is fine, but I was pondering if it really fits with TCs nature of needing 3-5 turns to come online. Isn't the Swiftspear just bad by then?
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After resolving TC you do get some spells to get Swiftspear big enough to matter.
I guess TC is more about getting advanced on the board, since there will be usually 2 more non-land cards, which means more tokens and less threats on the enemy side (bolts to their faces). It may be more about getting ahead on the late game. I was already thinking of try pyromancer, but with this result I guess I'll try the whole TC/Pyromancer/Swiftspear.
Congrats for the win Bob, and also for the guts of trying this new approach! Unfortunately I only got to see the finals but it was awesome! This result will for sure put UR Delver back on the spotlights, as the newcomers swiftspear and TC.
I get the strong appeal that TC and I really don't doubt about it's effectiveness. But my point is, doesn't multiple TC makes you want to mulligan more than usual? I mean, if your initial hand isn't very consistent and has a copy of TC in it, isn't that hard for your early game? It can be pitch to FoW, but it seems a little flat to me. I will definitely run at least 2 copies of it in my deck, but I guess 4 of them would make your early game harder on you, if it's not too consistent.
By the way, I was just about to post this reply when I saw Dig Through Time. It seems really strong card, getting to pick 2 among 7 cards seems better than just drawing 3 cards. The extra "non-delvable" mana seems not attractive, but I guess a lot of times you just had to play TC for 2 or 3 cmc anyway. What do you guys think about this card? This could also work like a shuffle effect for brainstorm, since you still look at other 5 cards and chose 2 among them and put the rest on the bottom of your library.
PS.: Sorry for my bad english, it's been some time since I haven't practiced it.
I cannot believe it. Seriously I am in shock that TC is not just playable, but apparently really good. It looked so incredibly shitty to me and I went to great lengths to tell everyone it was garbage!
Well, I fully admit I was wrong. I'm still not convinced it's 4-of worthy, but when reviewing the games that Bob Huang played, it's become apparent that its early game function is FoW fodder, so maybe 4 is the right call! I mean I can't argue with his results can I?
That said, I STILL don't think monestary swiftspear is anything to write home about. In a lot of games he topdecked it and it only swung in for 1 damage in situations where goblin guide would have been better.
It certainly seems to me like this archetype is splitting into snapcaster/price decks and pyro/swiftspear decks. Personally I'm not gonna stop playing with snapcaster because that card is just my absolute favorite creature ever to play with, and I'm not convinced swiftspear fits in my current deck. I also am not sure treasure cruise fits in my current deck since I rely so heavily on flashback and grim lavamancer.
What I'm saying is basically: Treasure cruise and swiftspear are apparently very good, but you have to SERIOUSLY change your deck to make them work. Don't just jam them into your deck and call it a day, you have to really think about what you're doing with them.
It's important to note that daze and goblin guide absolutely do NOT belong in the same deck. Daze loses its value when you have the distinct possibility of giving your opponent lands.
Another important note is that swiftspear rewards casting spells on your turn. This isn't a bad thing it's just important to remember what you're playing with. It means you're not going for the control game, you're going for the aggro route, except without price of progress. Seems weird to me come to think of it.
Look the point I'm making is that despite both decks including only two colors and delver, this new list is by and large its own creation. It's a new thing. It's different. We probably shouldn't make blanket statements like "swiftspear/TC is bad/good because reasons" because there are now two distinct archetypes of UR and even these archetypes have distinct builds within them.
It's probably a meta call, which is such a cop-out to say but there you have it, it's a total meta call.
Can Snapcaster and TC play together? While it seems that they would not, I would be interested to see a list that ran a 2/2 or 2/3 split (one way or another).
"It's important to note that daze and goblin guide absolutely do NOT belong in the same deck. Daze loses its value when you have the distinct possibility of giving your opponent lands."
Goblin Guide doesn't give the opponent more lands. He can give them more spells. If is was a land on top, they would have drawn it anyway, so it doesn't make Daze worse.
These are different lists, with different strategy. One uses 8 burn spells. The other uses 8 free counterspells. Good use of critical thinking!
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Yeah, it's totally a different kind of game. UR Burn Delver is something like Guide beating in the very early game, Delver flying over goyf's heads and burning going straight up. Yeah, not absolutely this way since you may sometimes burn the enemy's creatures, but it's pretty much it. And also, price of progress showing your opponent that their progress should not go unchecked and hitting them for tons of damage. UR Burn is meant to finish the game as early as possible, and stopping goyfs not by killing or countering it, but but making they stay on defensive because of your guide when they are at 8 life.
The line of play of this new UR decklist goes more for the grindy kind of game, as it's list makes more value of Pyromancer and Swiftspear with it's tons of cantrips and board-whipping spells (that's why it runs a 2-1 split of forked/chain instead of the other way around). It's supposed to make a great board presence with pyromancer and fast clock with delver, but not as fast and board-ignoring clock as UR Burn Delver. I mean, that's what I guess is the line taken when I see the list.
I only disagree with the daze/guide statement. Both are incredible cards at the early game, and that's the moment you have to hit them in the face and counter their spells, and daze does it without denying you the possibility of playing the cards you have to play in the beginning of the game. If your opponent has few lands, daze is great and if it has too much PoP is beyond great.
I am pretty consistently unimpressed by daze in UR. I think daze is incredible in a deck that runs wasteland and even more incredible in a deck that runs stifle and wasteland but if you're not running either I'd rather fill those slots with spell pierces and/or burn. But it's all opinion in the end, and I might be wrong in light of Huang's deck.
I think the list will evolve over time though and it will either gain wastes or lose daze.
This is just wrong and shortsighted, as others already pointed out. Daze is about aggression, which is exactly what Goblin Guide is also in the deck for. Guide gets worse the longer the game goes on and Daze helps you slow down the pace of the game. You dont care about giving the opponent lands (PoP says hi). You care about getting the beats in.
Alright a lot of people are calling me out on my goblin guide/daze comment so I'll just address you all together.
The last time UR Delver took first place at a large tournament it was (unless I'm mistaken) Andrew Schneider's list, which you can find here. It is, in my opinion, the quintessential UR Burn deck. It doesn't have any bells or whistles; It's 8 beaters, 13 burn spells (I'm counting lavamancer as burn), 4 snapcasters, 6 counterspells, and then a whole lot of cantrips. That's the deck, that's what he ran with, and it worked. It's about as straight forward as deck building can be. The only thing that people were confused about was the lack of daze.
It turns out that when your strategy is to just burn them out, daze doesn't actually help you a whole lot. You don't have any mana denial so the 1 mana is negligible after the first few turns (unless your opponent is just bad; playing around daze is one of the first things you learn to do in legacy), and bouncing a land is a tempo play on yourself because it keeps you off snapcaster mana. Remember, unlike RUG and this newer UR tempo style of deck, you actually run a pseudo-4-drop since one of your most consistent win conditions is flashing back price. Being able to flash back bolt on turn 3 is also huge since it puts another body on the field. In my personal experience daze is incredibly underwhelming in decks that run snapcaster. Decks that run snapcaster are probably also running price, decks that run price are probably running goblin guide, therefore I think guide and daze don't belong in the same deck for several reasons.
In this newer tempo style of deck you really only need like 2 mana to win. With pyromancer and swiftblade you want as mana 0 mana cards as you can, so 4 daze is probably fine, plus you don't need huge amounts of mana (you know it's legacy when 4 mana is a huge amount of mana). So daze is probably ok here.
Actually, it's definitely at least "ok" here because Huang just wrecked that SCG open with 4 daze. However I'm just not sure it's the best choice since you don't run waste.
In my opinion waste and daze are best friends, and waste is already incredibly strong. I don't think going up to 14 lands and 4 wastes (cutting a treasure cruise probably) is out of the question for Huang's deck. I also don't think that cutting daze for 3 spell pierce and 1 chain lighting (or 2 pierce/2 chains or whatever the hell you want in those slots) is out the question.
Remember that this deck is brand new. The cards haven't even been legal for more than a week. When asked, Huang said he brought 4 treasure cruise "because he had a feeling about them;" it seems to me like he's a very skilled player and he was testing these new cards out, and it turns out that hey, the test is a rousing success. Just because he won the open doesn't mean his list is infallible and legacy decks aren't perfected the first time they win a tournament.
And finally, this is all opinion based on anecdotal evidence. If you call someone's opinion on magic cards wrong you probably just have different experiences with the cards than them, and that's fine, but it's important to recognize that unless I test every card I'm discussing like a thousand times against every other tier 1 or 2 deck I won't have an actual basis to call any of it fact, and neither do you.
Example:That's a really good point, they are both incredible early game cards. I still disagree with you but at least we both have reasons. I never considered running both daze and PoP as "hedging your bets" so to speak.
By saying "I disagree with you" he immediately suggests that it's an opinion, and the rest of the post comes across as conversational instead of confrontational.
When you start your post out with "this is just wrong" you imply that everything you're writing afterward is fact. It literally cannot be fact because it's a card game. You also say "Daze is about aggression" which isn't strictly speaking incorrect, but it also ignores the fact that it can be used to great effect as a control card. You say you don't care about giving the opponent lands, which is true for price of progress, but not really true about daze because it gets worse the more mana they have. Show me a miracle player tapping out for entreat the angels and I will show you a bad miracle player.
Anyway sorry for the long post I took like 60mg of adderall this morning and I'm more wired than a car bomb
I think the Daze / Goblin Guide dichotomy makes sense, at least from having played the GG side of that equation to a great finish. That side of the spectrum is a glorified burn deck, and you don't care about any spell the opponent plays so long as it prevents you from winning. Young Pyromancer, on the other hand, fits more along the lines of Daze and has incredible synergy with it (turn 2, protect YP against removal, make a 1/1).
It's at the point where updating either list (YP/Daze and GG/Burn) with new cards like Treasure Cruise comes at an opportunity cost of eliminating some other element in the deck.
I believe that Huang's list reflects the lowered reliance on burn (Chain lightning, POP) in order to fuel more cantrip chains for Monastary Swiftspear.
I think Monastary Swiftspear still has a solid place in the GG/Burn variations, as at least this aspect both decks share (chaining cantrips, main phase burn).
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I actually agree with everything you said in this post. I guess it's just about how we value different things of the game. Here are two things that I use to consider when I play daze: I have to have at least 8 counterspells in this deck (this is kinda arbitrary, and just my opinion on this deck), and the early game for this deck defines how will be the pace of the game and the way your opponent uses his resources.
In my experience there are 3 or 4 different MD counterspell choises for this deck: Force of Will (I guess there's no discussion about this), daze, spell pierce and flusterstorm.
Flusterstorm is really rare to be seen in MD but that's something I'd maybe test someday. I mean, beside the other 3 before mentioned, this is the best IMO. But let's make it about the choise between daze and spell pierce, just mentioned flusterstorm for people not to say that this was arbitrary or something like this.
The differences between these 2 are: Daze slows your pace in 1 land drop when it's used and spell pierce requires one spare land when you want it to be active. Also, spell pierce doesn't counter creatures, which may be huge in some matchups (but most of the times it just counters another instant/sorcery anyway). Daze permission is for 1 mana and spell pierce is for 2, which is actually a huge difference in terms of being able to play around it.
But for me what matters the most is the T1 play. Most of the times, if you play a T1 creature it's answered right away so that the enemy doesn't get attacked, and if he plays around daze it's really great as his resources get limited and he may get one shot or two before removing your threats, which mean an extra bolt of value out of your creature. Sometimes he will not be able to play around it, so he will fall right into the trap. The point here is that daze IMO is the best protection for the T1 creature, or even to assure your bolt in the opponent's T1 creature wont get countered (FoW is assured, but the card disadvantage can hurt us more than losing the creature). Hands with creature, daze, cantrip, bolt, land are the best possible IMO, and that's what I think that makes daze so special.
There's also the other side that daze's value as the game goes by gets really low as spellpierce still can be really though to play around, and also pierce can be realistically flashed back with snapcaster (while daze still can but probably won't). I guess the choise between these two counters is about how much you value your very early game (when you can't have spare mana without losing a lot of efficiency) instead of your late game. Anyway, I think that both cards are still really bad topdecks in late game.
PS.: I just realized that one of the points that makes us disagree with each other is that I value a lot having 8 counterspells while you can live without it. I actually will try lowering it to 6 or 7 counterspells, with daze, spell pierce AND with flusterstorm (I always wanted to play it MD) just to see how much I miss those 2 copies. Anyways, thank you for your big post, this shows not who's wrong or right but the reason why we take one line or another.
Exactly, Daze loses value as the game goes on. So does Goblin Guide. You don't play for the long run, as UR Delver is about early aggression. That's where both cards shine and when arguing against them you should weigh in what they actually do for you in this stage of the game. "Loses momentum as the game goes on" is not an argument against cards helping you play your strategy to the fullest extent, which is "acting as the aggressor early on", to begin with.
I don't know how much experience you actually have with the archetype and Snapcaster builds in general, but no, Flashbacked-PoPs are far from "one of your most consistent win conditions".
Any particular reason why cardgames don't allow for facts? Was there anything untrue about my post? I don't think so. Just because Daze "can be used to great effect as a control card", which is mostly only true for aggressive decks to begin with, doesn't mean it isn't about aggression. You also don't really care about giving them lands, because they would still draw them on the next turn and (true for most games) play one land a turn at max. Since you're playing a deck made for the early stages of games, this is negligible for the most part. Hence the "you don't care about giving them lands". So I don't get your point.
I build the deck a strictly bit more forward
4 Treasure Cruise
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Brainstorm
4 Volcanic Island
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Ponder
3 Force of Will
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Daze
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Mishra's Bauble
4 Lotus Petal
3 Wasteland
2 Thought Scour
1 Forked Bolt
SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 2 Pyroblast
SB: 2 True-Name Nemesis
SB: 4 Surgical Extraction
SB: 2 Null Rod
SB: 1 Island
SB: 2 Forked Bolt
What do you hope to achieve with lotus petal? I think running 17-18 lands, 8-10 of which are fetches, is gonna be your best bet. 8 fetches, 6-7 mana lands and 3-4 wastes is what I would run.
Why mishra's bauble? That card doesn't do anything. Probe draws you a card when you cast it, bauble is just really bad in my opinion. I get that it buffs monetary swiftspear but you shouldn't run bad cards just to make already good cards better. It would be like running seal of fire to buff goyf, at the end of the day you're running a sorcery speed shock.
In bauble's place I would run a permanent threat like pyromancer or goblin guide or even snapcaster, my favorite card.
I like thought scour. It cantrips and feeds your recalls. Good choice.
All in all I think you're focusing too hard on filling your gy for treasure cruise. You'll fill it up really quickly just by playing the game, but for to get value out of drawing cards you need to run enough spells that actually do something! What do you do if they decay your swiftspear? There's a real possibility that you spend the rest of the game durdling around with cantrips. But at least you can brag about how many cards your drew as they kill you with goyf! You definitely need more threats.
I dunno man I've won a metric shit ton of games on the back of snapcaster price. I've actually been playing ur counterburn since before delver got printed, but it was never any good until delver and snapcaster were printed. My first list resembling modern UR didn't actually run delver, I thought it was too inconsistent, lol. I built the deck around snapcaster.
So keeping that in mind: If you want to win ASAP, and snapcaster helps you win, and snapcaster costs 3-4 mana, why would you willingly bounce your own lands when you could just run more cards that kill your opponent? That's my logic anyway. You also want the majority of your spells to be good snapcaster targets, which daze is not. Snapping back spell pierce can be game changing. And it's not that daze can't also be gamechanging but it's nice to be able to flash back counters mid-lategame
You're still coming across really confrontation by the way, it's hard to have an actual conversation with you because of your "I know best and am better than you" tone.
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