I tried a red splash very early on and it was bad, i tried splashing blue for Leovold for a while, but isn't worth it and having a bigger splash for Brainstorm takes too many slots and doesn't fit into this style of deck. If you are running GSZ, especially on Magic Online where Storm is still probably the 2nd most played deck even though it's bad in the current metagame, you really want to have Gaddock Teeg to have a shot to win game 1, and postboard white also provides better hate than other colors. Also, Knight of the Reliquary is really strong if you untap with it. I experimented a little bit without the white splash, but couldn't make it work against combo without the white hate cards - just discard isn't good enough.Originally Posted by Valleysdai
Chalice isn't very good against me. It hits a few cards and that can occasionally be relevant, but if i would play a Chalice deck against my deck, i would board it out. (It hits Crop Rotation. It kinda hits Cabal Therapy, but i board that out very often, and even in game 1 the most important thing with Therapy against those decks is to have it as a sacrifice outlet for Veteran Explorer. It hits Veteran Explorer too, but in only play 2 and it's far more likely i search for it with GSZ.) This deck is probably favored against most Chalice decks (my winrate against Eldrazi is positive and my winrate against Mono-Red Prison is even better).
Overall the deck beats pretty much every fair deck - i really need a bigger sample size to say that with confidence about all the different decks, and many matchups are pretty close, but there isn't a single fair deck i'm really worried about (apart from my bad run against Miracles, but that has to be mostly variance). Tracker is very good as a draw engine.
About combo decks, it depends:
Storm is unfavorable, but close - almost certainly over 40% (my winrate on Magic Online is around 45% against Storm, and i lost many games to my own mistakes because for that matchup all my testing on xmage was worthless).
Turbo Depths is favorable, my guess is at least around 60%.
Dredge is very favorable, my guess is over 70%.
Elves is close, can't say either way but definitely between 40 and 60%. All the boardwipes help a lot, and Elves is slow enough for my own DD combo to be very relevant and occasionally fast enough even without any hate.
BR-Reanimator is close, i think slightly under 50%.
SnT is really bad. I think it's winnable (30-40% maybe) if they don't play Omni, but if they do it's probably under 20%. Nothing to do about that, i tried for a while, but playing sideboard cards specifically for that matchup hurts too many other matchups, and SnT isn't a large part of the metagame right now.
Can't really say anything about other combo decks, all the glass cannon decks that go for T1 kills are probably pretty bad, but they aren't really a big part of the metagame. Midrange combo decks like Aluren or Food Chain should be fine.
Just got another 5-0 today (and a 4-1 in the League before that).
Maindeck is mostly the same as the last 5-0 (ignoring all the changes i made between these Leagues, because most of them were probably not good), i just removed the Titania and moved the 2nd Pernicious Deed into the maindeck.
Sideboard had some changes:
2x Thoughtseize
2x Surgical
2x Lingering Souls
2x Ethersworn Canonist
1x Reclamation Sage
2x Crop Rotation
2x Choke
2x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
There was some luck and non-games involved, but anyway, here are the matches:
Storm (ANT):
Game 1: I know what he's playing (because i just played him in my last match in the league before that). Start with T1 Therapy (i think blind hitting Infernal Tutor), Exlorer, T2 GSZ->Teeg.
Game 2: He keeps 7, i mulligan to 4. And i still almost get there because he kept a very reactive hand, unfortunately for me he draws his 4th removal spell to kill my Teeg and finally go off before i can find anything else, on Turn 7 or so.
Game 3: My sideboard change for today pays off with T2 Thalia (after i just kept up Crop Rotation T1). He is stuck on 1 Land and eventually concedes.
Lands:
Game 1: He has Exploration and eventually Loam going, but i know his hand, i have Knight and Ballista, since he isn't threatening the combo i can attack with the Knight and kill him before he dredges into anything dangerous. He concedes the match. (Probably a good idea, i have lost to Lands before, but i haven't lost 2 sideboard games in the same match against Lands yet with this.)
UB-Painter (or something like that, maybe even Grixis but i didn't see any red cards):
Game 1: He is stuck on 1 land and it's not really a game.
Game 2: He gets his combo into play, activates it, sees Emrakul and concedes. If he didn't board in any answer probably a good idea, he wasn't beating my board (i thin i had Knight and Tracker going).
Depths:
Game 1: I have to Crop Rotate into Karakas on T1 against his discard. He has Needle for that and Ghost Quarter for my Stage, but i'm attacking him down with an otherwise pretty useless Knight. He eventually gets Marit Lage into play, i force his GQ to kill my Stage, i have Library in play and tons of outs at this point: Abrupt Decay or Deed kill his Needle and makes Karakas active, Crop Rotation with the Knight in play would get my own Marit Lage, and finally what i draw is a Tracker which puts him dead on board when he attacks, while i'm at 21 life after fetching a Glimmerpost with Knight. Next turn i find Deed and that's it.
Game 2: He mulligans to 4 while i keep a sketchy 7 that doesn't have any hate cards. I probably should have mulliganed that. He hits some perfect topdecks and goes for it and my Knight would be one turn too slow.
Game 3: I discard his Spirit Guide T1, he has Stage and Depths but no other mana. Eventually i go for it with Crop->Stage to steal his Marit Lage - wouldn't win against another Spirit Guide because he could Crop for Karakas, but he doesn't have it.
Aggro-Loam:
Game 1: I have Therapy and Explorer, take his Knight and leave him with Dark Confidant and Library. But since he doesn't have any removal i can GSZ->Tracker, he doesn't find any removal either and that completely takes over the game.
Game 2: My T2 Ballista keeps his Liliana in check for one turn and my RecSage destroys his Sylvan Library, but he has Toxic Deluge and then Ajani - no way i'm winning from there against those 2 planeswalkers, i try but it's hopeless.
Game 3: He has lots of answers, especially his PFire keeps killing all my threats because he is kinda flooded and has enough mana for that. Funny thing: With Courser in play it's a bad idea to Crop Rotate for Bojuka Bog to get rid of PFire - we both realized that at the same time (or rather you should pay attention how you stack the triggers, i certainly didn't). I got rid of his Dark Confidant with Toxic Deluge early and he doesn't find any threats, while i have Library going. After i resolved Primeval Titan he has StP for that and GQ for my Eye of Ugin, but eventually i find Emrakul to end the game.
Didn't get to test the Chokes in this League or the one before that (i boarded them in against Storm, but they were completely useless in those games, also boarded them in against that Painter deck but didn't see them).
Thalia was really good on the other hand - another hatebear against Storm is probably a good idea, and in the League before that i played against Infect twice and Thalia won me a game there too. I wanted to try some tax effect as hate alongside Choke. I was thinking about Trinisphere before that as a different option, but i think Thalia is better because she definitely comes down before turn 3, and from my experience hatecards on turn 3 and later just don't matter against Storm.
Congrats! Awesome results. What’s the Bog/Courser/P Fire interaction?
If you stack it wrong (like i did obviously), you gain the life from the land coming into play before Bog clears their graveyard. And so they get the PFire back.
Nice write up! White really does have some of the best sideboard cards. I'm going to stick with the TKS for a bit longer - I wish I had the deck on mtgo. I'm torn on buying cards I already in paper though :/If you stack it wrong (like i did obviously
I'm really not sure on sideboarding choke against storm either - there are plenty of other things I would rather have, though unfortunately I don't have a lot of solid permanent based hate in my current configuration.
Ballista for your explorers is aaaaawesome. It hadn't even crossed my mind. I like the idea of lingering souls. Jace IS a problem when he resolves. Him bouncing TKS is especially annoying.
@leshrac82 have you thought of testing enlightened tutor? It seems like it hits quite a bit of your answers
I did that a while ago, the deck looked very different then. It worked for some matchups, but overall the deck got a lot worse, no matter how i build the tutor package.
And with the current deck, i don't see any reason to do this: I have Deed, Library, Courser, Ballista, Choke and Ethersworn as possible targets. Only Ethersworn is good against combo decks, everything else is against fair decks, and Enlightened Tutor is card disadvantage and therefore not good against fair decks (that was the main result of my testing, there is no card so impactful against fair decks that it's worth the card disadvantage).
Last night i played a match that was streamed by jarvisyu from the other side: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/243240739 (match starts around 2:49).
I watched the video (and not the stream like at least some of his viewers were suggesting), here is what was happening from my side:
Game 1:
I paused against the DRS turn 1: I was expecting him to play Lands because he is known for that, i kept a hand that could play a T3 5/5 Knight out of just basics and that's usually good enough against Lands. Also i was planning to play Cabal Therapy on turn 1, and that plan wasn't really working any more now.
On turn 3, i wanted to play therapy and flash it back to clear out the way for my Knight next turn. I played Teeg first to be able to flash it back in any case. After that resolved, and the Therapy resolved too, Lightning Bolt was the most logical choice to name: He would have used Daze if he had it (and i can play the Knight around 1 Daze). If he has FoW, he can't play it with Teeg in play, and without Bolt he can't get Teeg of the battlefield. Also, a Bolt could very likely kill the Knight with DRS on the table. Then i made a mistake: I abandoned my plan to flash back the Therapy since his FoW was shut of by Teeg anyway, but since he had Wasteland in hand, my Knight wasn't able to bring the fast Marit Lage kill i was planning (by fetching just basics i didn't even give him the chance to use it), so i probably needed more action after the Knight - i should have flashbacked Therapy here mostly to get rid of the Teeg and turn on my GSZs again.
I get punished for that mistake immediately by drawing 2x GSZ in a row.
Now i needed to get his Wasteland of the table to stick a Marit Lage, the best way to do that was to fetch Cloudposts and threaten Eldrazi. When i fetched the Glimmerpost and copied Cloudpost with Stage, this was my thought process: I needed to get life not to die next turn. If he didn't waste here, i was probably screwed (or at least i had fewer outs), but since nobody plays a second Stage like me, this play was most likely inducing him to waste the Stage. If he does that, i still need to draw something, but i had some outs that would at least beat him if he doesn't draw anything (i'm counting: 2x Toxic Deluge, 2x Pernicious Deed, 2x Crop Rotation, 1x Stage, 1x Depths, 1x Ballista, 1x Primeval Titan, 1x Ulamog, 2x Glimmerpost, 1x Eye of Ugin, 2x Lingering Souls would ge me more time and even if i don't draw anything i can fetch another Glimmerpost for a redraw with probably fewer outs). If he wastes the copied Cloudpost instead, i could just get Marit Lage.
Since i draw my second Stage for the turn, going for Marit Lage was clearly the best play - he needed to draw 2 Bolts (or Bolt + TNN) to win against that.
Game 2:
To keep that hand was a gamble, but i think it was correct: I had enough land, i had a Toxic Deluge and i had a black source to go with it. I really only needed to find a green source in my first 4 drawsteps, including Mox Diamond. And a white source would make Lingering Souls possible, that would probably buy me some time too.
My draws this game were pretty good and from there the hand played itself. If he didn't Bolt me and instead held it for my Tracker, he would have lost that to the Cabal Therapy - i was blind naming Bolt again, since that was again the most dangerous card (and i was kinda expecting there to be another Bolt too because he knew about the Tracker).
(Note: The GSZ would have just gotten another Tracker in this spot most likely - i was thinking about Courser as the only other option, after drawing the Therapy it would have been Tracker for sure. Didn't have enough fodder for Knight for that to be good enough, didn't have enough green mana for Scooze to be good enough, and didn't want to wait for enough mana for Primeval Titan.)
About possible changes to the deck: I'm currently playing the Lingering Souls main again over Abrupt Decay (it just keeps overperforming, while all the spot removal spells underperformed - i really don't like spot removal that much in this deck, i'm playing so many lands, my spells need to be better than just 1-for-1s that are dead cards some of the time), i got rid of the Chokes in the sideboard (useless against Storm, and probably not what i want against Delver either - Delver usually beats me with very aggressive starts, i almost always win the long game, and Choke doesn't help against that. that just leaves me with other fair blue decks, i didn't get to test it against those, but i don't think it's worth it for just those matchups), i'm trying out Sorcerous Spyglass in the board (with mixed results so far - it won me a few games on the spot and it was pretty useless some other times).
And i'm also playing a Vesuva again and removed the 3rd Glimmerpost for that, mostly to have access to a 2nd Bojuka Bog when i need it (already won me some games).
Nice write up, I am interested in how the deck does, it is an interesting way of taking it.
What are your thoughts of it on paper? I know that the meta game is a lot different online to most paper meta games, so I'm interested in any changes you would make as well.
At some point i want to go over the different matchups and write up how i'm doing and maybe more - but i really need to have a bigger samplesize for that, it just doesn't make any sense to predict winrates from 10 matches or something like that. The only matchups where i have even close to a relevant samplesize are Grixis Delver and Storm - Grixis Delver is 60-65% and Storm is 45-50% so far.
Anyway, on Magic Online the deck is good enough to keep up - the overall winrate is somewhere around 55-65% for me, and everything from 51% up is good enough to go infinite on Magic Online. Obviously not a Tier 1 deck, but neither NicFit or 12-Post have been even remotely close to that for a while. I'm still hoping the winrate will settle on the higher end of this once i figure out an optimal build.
The deck in general can work in paper just fine, but some changes might be necessary. Storm is still the most played deck online (ANT and TES combined i faced more than even Grixis Delver, and that is far above any other deck), and at the moment probably not very relevant in paper. So the Thalias i added to the board could go for sure, don't know about other stuff - but if Storm isn't a relevant deck, the maindeck Teeg becomes questionable and some more sideboard slots could change.
Overall most matchups are very winnable, i'm confident my winrate in almost every matchup is at least 40% and i think even the glass cannon combo decks like Belcher are probably not much worse if at all. The only exception is Show&Tell with Omniscience, that matchup is just unwinnable - if that deck is a big part of your metagame i probably wouldn't play this deck.
I'm getting similar numbers to Leshrac percentage wise - except replace grixis delver with czech pile. I've only played to Grixis Delver once and lost 1-2 (in a previous report on this thread.
Also, from Monday:
I did a 3 rounder last night with my BG list. I replaced oracle with courser, and mirror with Ballista.
I went 2-0 against miracles, twice. Both game 1s were very long, grindy affairs. I started off game 1 with a t1 therapy, naming fow, and hit. I dropped a veteran explorer and flashed it back, and he brainstormed away the cards I saw (including a jace), and I dropped a sylvan library with those two lands. It took another 15 turns to clean it up as I just drew nothing. Game 3 he dropped a quick mentor and I dropped a choke in response and won.
2nd Miracles matchup was similar except for game 1 I had titan countered by a counterbalance twice. He actually cast all of his termini that game. I had exiled Entreat with tks earlier in the match and he hadn't realized it. He almost decked himself. I eventually emmied him out.
I lost a round to dragon stompy. I knew what he was playing, so I mulled to 6 because of no way to get basics. My 6 would have been okay for anothing but a turn 1 bloodmoon, which he had. Then he followed it up with a chalice on one and I just happened to have all my 1 drops. Game 2 was long, and went similar. I basically lost to a t1 chandra, then blood moon t2, and overall it was close. the turn before I could stablize he got me - I deeded away his bridges and moons with a titan on board but he had the one of Chaos Warp he sided in for my titan.
Its that time of the year again, getting ready for seattle
i hadnt picked up the deck since it lost top, so figuring out list has been fun and tough.
this is the list ive played 5 leagues with, 3-2, 5-0, 3-2, 2-3, and 0-5
4 primeval titan
1 ulamog, the ceaseless hunger
1 emrakul the aeons torn
1 trinket mage
1 worldbreaker
4 show and tell
4 brainstorm
3 ponder
1 divert
4 force of will
2 repeal
1 candelabra of tawnos
2 expedition map
1 pithing needle
3 crop rotation
1 moments peace
4 cloudpost
4 glimmerpost
2 vesuva
4 misty rainforest
4 tropical island
1 cavern of sould
1 karakas
1 eye of ugin
1 bojuka bog
1 nephalia academy
1 glacial chasm
1 island
1 forest
sb
4 blue elemental blast
2 thragtusk
1 divert
1 surgical extraction
1 reclamation sage
1 relic of progenitus
2 dismember
1 cavern of souls
1 engineered explosives
1 flusterstorm
most of what i have been facing on mtgo has been 4 color leovold, storm, grixis delver, mono red prisn, UW. and BR reanimator
i have been struggling with the delver matchs and i can really seem to figure it out, it seems like all my opponents just had it all.
mono red i prison has been descent, 3-1 in matches
reanimator and storm are sub par as expected but game ones are winnable.
force of will in the main i feel has improved all of these matchups, i mainly added them to the main to force through a show and tell against delver.
i tried out library as a top substitute, but it feels to slow, maybe could find a home in the board
i opted to go with 3 ponders and a divert in the top slots
my board is a mess as usual it seems
i think overall im happy with what i have in it, the only new thing i added was a cavern to to board to help find it in matches were i want 2.
after all the reanimator and storm games i feel like i want more surgicals/flusterstorms maybe.
the nephalia acadamey has proven useful, and is in the khalni garden spot. there just isnt enough LoTV floating around to need this land imo.
the last league i played in was the 5-0, which made me feel a lot better about playing this deck, but i did not face any delvers, 2 leovold decks, lands, burn, and BR reanimator. i
Nice to see another 12-post deck go 5-0!
My deck is probably the strongest version against Delver, but it has some other drawbacks - mostly i'm not as strong against the other fair blue decks (after losing a bunch of matches in a row my winrate against Czech Pile is below 50%, and my winrate against Miracles is even worse). I'm trying to fix that, just have to figure out how (currently i'm trying Expedition Map and a 2nd Primeval Titan to see if that helps, going back a little bit to the traditional builds that have better matchups there - didn't help yesterday, but the cards felt good to have).
I'm losing to Delver if they have it all. The most important cards to beat them are my boardwipes, if i resolve at least 1 Toxic Deluge or Pernicious Deed i like my chances. Also important is the Dark Depths plan - either i win that way or i can force them to keep at least 1 Wasteland open all the time and win on the back of a Tracker or two. The Eldrazi game plan just doesn't work against Delver, i always board out my Eldrazi and Eye of Ugin against them - too slow and too clunky. That only works in my version with all those other threats, you probably can't do that in UG. That boardplan makes a huge difference - Game 1 against Delver i'm the underdog, i probably win just 40% of my preboard games against Delver, but postboard without those clunky cards things change a lot.
About the MTGO Metagame, i don't want to go over my winrates yet, but this is the metagame i have been facing, all the decks with at least 5 matches:
Delver (Grixis) 47
Storm (ANT) 33
Death&Taxes 28
Czech Pile 24
Lands 19
Mono-Red Prison 17
Miracles 16
Turbo-Depths 15
Elves 14
Storm (TES) 14
BR-Reanimator 14
Grixis Control 13
Delver (BUG) 13
Maverick 12
Delver (UR) 12
Eldrazi 10
Dredge 10
Aluren 9
Omnisneak 9
Burn 7
Sneak&Show 6
Infect 5
Delver (RUG) 5
BUG-DeathsShadow 5
That's an impressive amount of data collection!
Grixis Delver: I think damn near everything loses when they have it all - it plays out like unbeatable combo. I too, often feel like Grixis Delver has it all when I play them - t1 drs into daze, wasteland follow-up OR a pyromancer git probe CT then waste me. It's ugly either way. The last game I played they had 3 FoWs to defend 2 delvers and rode those to victory. Its a tough deck regardless. I had the best luck against it with C/g post but meh, what can you do?
I like my BG build against miracles - Therapy + TKS to clear their counters, and then warping wail for their miracles have won me multiple games against them. I keep a single explorer in but try to rely on my dryad arbor plus excavator to get value out of them. Sylvan Library has also been key. Emmy plus infinite turns has been my win con each time. I find myself searching up bojuka bog more and more often against that deck to keep snapcasters from being useful, and to turn azcanta off. My last 3 matches against miracles have been 2-0 (x2) and 2-1, albeit there were some close games.
What about Czech pile gives you the most trouble? I find that matchup to be decent, except when I get hymn t2, then snap hymned t3. That's more of a BUG delver thing tho. TKS does great work against them, as does warping wail. Leovold on my Sylvan library is one of the more frustrating things in the matchup.
Exactly that is giving me the most trouble, i get hymned on t2 way too often, especially in postboard games, and most of the time they have another Hymn or a snapcaster as a follow up. With no cards in hand from turn 3 on this deck is hard to beat, whatever i topdeck is either useless or they can deal with it. And they keep discarding my stuff, later in the game with K-Command chained with Snapcasters so i don't even really get a drawstep.
The matchup isn't unwinnable, but overall that happens often enough to turn it into a bad matchup.
Against Miracles, they just keep countering all my stuff, usually have Jace on turn 4, postboard often have Back to Basics (that alone is beatable, but not combined with Jace), sometimes have an early Mentor (which is still more beatable than Jace and B2B). I lost 2 games in a row against Miracles after casting Emrakul, didn't have Eye or Karakas and they had a Terminus set up on top with Brainstorm in hand. Also got my Eye of Ugin milled with Predict after they used Portent on me multiple times. Azcanta is definitely a problem too, if they don't have B2B they use that for too much cardadvantage - between that and Jace they often draw 3 cards a turn, enough to find answers for everything.
There was definitely some bad luck involved in my losses against Miracles, more than half the time i was either manascrewed or flooded, but even adjusting for that i have my doubts this matchup is as good as it is supposed to be.
I was playing Warping Wail last year and in the beginning of this year, but i found it underwhelming especially in these matchups. I rarely have mana up to counter a Hymn that early in the game (i played with Wail for a long time and i don't think i ever countered a Hymn with it), countering a Miracle doesn't work that often either. And overall it kinda requires a 4th color, i don't always have colorless mana in the early game. It's still a card on my radar, but the last time i tried it, it didn't really work out.
I 5-0ed a League again yesterday, with a 2nd Primeval Titan in the maindeck (but no Expedition Maps, tried them and wasn't convinced) and a lot of discard in the board (4x Thoughtseize, 2x Collective Brutality). Played Death&Taxes (2-0), Aggro-Loam (2-1), Czech Pile (2-0), BR-Reanimator (2-1), Sneak&Show (2-0).
Other cards i tried in the sideboard for a few Leagues:
Carpet of Flowers: Really bad against Leovold, even without that problem definitely not what i want overall.
Pulse of Murasa: Really bad against Deathrite Shaman - when that gets banned it might be worth a try again, but not before that.
Sorcerous Spyglass: Very good in some matchups that are already very good for me, not relevant enough against blue decks (too slow against Delver to shut down their Wastelands before they waste you at least once, and Czech Pile and Miracles have a ton of anwers).
Thalia: Very good against Storm, sadly not that helpful against most other combo decks (and kinda a nombo with Explorer). I think i prefer more discard instead.
I've had a lot of luck with wail, but that is partially because of colorless being my 3rd color. All of the things you've described have been made a lot easier with TKS. I still never know to stick him in or prime time vs omnitell these days.
The trade off I guess is that you get to win more combo games with teeg pre-board, and white. I face more non-combo matchups locally so I've went with that. Storm is played a lot online, no? Teeg, Knight, and Canonist are your white cards at the moment. I guess I'm shaving off percentage points vs combo for points in other areas. TKS performed so well for me I went up to 4.
Turn 1 Mox Diamond is such a great play in this deck. Would you ever consider going up to 3? I *never* want two...so I've held off up until this point.
The game where I T1 Mox Diamond into CT, into Vet, into sylvan library felt amazing. I didn't get to follow it up with a T2 TKS unfortunately, but felt good nonetheless.
I just watched the video - sweet game and congrats!
Naming bolt made perfect sense - its what I would have named in that situation as well. Name what you fear - removal for your only creature on board. Protect it so it protects your threats from getting forced. Having enough sac targets for the Kotr does seem precarious at times, though I suppose you don't need too many if you are bopping them with a 20/20.
Maybe TKS works better in your list - i can't really add more colorless mana to the deck, and my white cards are too important to drop the color. You watched that game 1 against jarvisyu - even though he had a Wasteland and left that open for a long time, the Knight alone eventually got there. That happens a lot, i win almost every game where i untap with Knight, he is only really bad in the matchups where that's unlikely to happen (so Miracles and Czech Pile, you can see the pattern). And Teeg is stealing a decent number of preboard games against Storm, without him that matchup would be much worse (and without any hatebears even postboard, it would be really bad and maybe below 20% instead of close to 50%). I think in the online metagame, you just have to have a good plan for Storm, and that will probably never change - everybody talks about how unplayable Storm is these days and it's still pretty much the most played deck on Magic Online. Can't give up on that matchup to have better matchups against Miracles and Czech Pile.
I played 3 Mox Diamonds for a long time (on xmage, changed that shortly before i switched to Magic Online). Generally i think more Mox Diamonds make the combo matchups better and hurt the fair matchups. With my deck, i feel i'm in the right position against combo now and have problems especially with the fair blue decks, so i don't really want to play more. Your deck is different, so maybe 3 Mox Diamonds are better in your list.
Please do, the sideboard guide and overall strategy before/after sideboarding against the most common decks would be very helpful!
I was trying your deck in paper a few months ago in our small local tournaments and it was very fun for both me and my opponents, although I did find that it requires sharp plays and planning turns ahead, knowing what deck can present us with (which is hard). My hands don't often "play out by themselves" as you sometimes write - probably because of my lack of experience with such decks (I usually play more straightforward 2-piece combo/controls in Legacy/Modern). Your old notes on sideboarding were pretty much a revelation when I found them, that swapping a huge chunks of the deck out, including a number of lands - your approach/playstyle is not very intuitive but seems logical, so I would like to know more about exact sideboarding and typical lines.
Having seen the newest changes to the deck in 5-0 league lists (Ballistas, more fetches and removal maindeck) makes me want to try the deck again - seems like they might help with the always present here Delver matchup, which was always giving me troubles, especially with Probe into Therapy my Mox/GSZ openings, leaving me without colored mana :(.
I've also noticed that when opponents became more familiar with this deck after playing/observing it a couple of times, they played a lot better against it (including blind Therapies), which seem like another difference between playing it online and in paper.
Just for Delver, this is my current approach:
Sideboarding: -1 Emrakul, -1 Ulamog, -1 Gaddock Teeg, -1 Eye of Ugin. Maybe -2 Crop Rotation if i have more sideboard cards (i'm still not sure if i want Crop Rotation postboard or not), and when i'm playing Titania it's another possible cut.
That means i need at least 4 good cards against Delver in the sideboard, possibly up to 6 but not more.
Those good sideboard cards could be:
Abrupt Decay (good against especially Miracles too, also good against Mono-Red Prison but probably not needed, ok against most fair decks)
Collective Brutality (decent against many decks including most combo decks)
Swords to Plowshares (best spot removal against Delver, decent against Reanimator and Turbo-Depths, decent against fair aggressive decks but not against controlling decks like Miracles or Czech Pile)
Lingering Souls (good against pretty much every fair deck, the only real argument against it is the mana requirement - sometimes it's stuck in your hand)
Choke (probably very good against Miracles and Czech Pile, still haven't figured out how good it actually is against Delver)
more Boardwipes (Toxic Deluge, Pernicious Deed, Engineered Explosives - which i have played on xmage for a long time, the reason i'm not at least trying it on Magic Online is that it's too expensive for a card i'm not even that sure about)
How to play, at least against Grixis Delver:
You often need one boardwipe to resolve, getting their FoWs out of their hands to do that helps a lot - unless another card is more problematic for my current plan it's usually the card to name with a blind Therapy. The Eldrazi plan is too slow against Delver. Preboard if it comes to it i take it, resolving an Eldrazi wins almost every time, but in general you can't expect to have that much mana against their fast clock and often multiple Wastelands. And postboard it's even worse because they prioritize Wastelands, making it even harder to ramp. If they don't know your plan postboard, that helps a lot, because they are more likely to waste your Cloudposts (and i really don't care that much about my Cloudposts postboard).
Your best threat against Delver is Knight of the Reliquary, ideally you resolve that when it's big enough to survive a Bolt. This can threaten the Dark Depths combo, and it often wins me games that way. Getting to Dark Dephts with Crop Rotation is harder because of their counterspells, but backed up by discard it works too (and sometimes you have to risk it). If they expect the combo, they will often leave one Wasteland open all game. Technically you can play around that with your 2nd Stage (and this is one reason i'm playing 2 Stages), but often it's just better to try to win a fair game - if you can get a Tracker out of Bolt range things are looking good, you just have to be careful not to get burned out. Courser is pretty good against Delver too, often more valuable than a Tracker. Ballista is usually just spot removal against Delver - if i can trade it with a Delver, i do it every time.
Currently i have 3 flex slots in the maindeck (the 2nd Primeval Titan, the 4th boardwipe and in my current list Titania) and 6 flex slots in the sideboard (4 of these sideboard slots are the anti-Delver slots, the other 2 are completely open and i'm trying different things). Playing more spot removal in those slots, and maybe even more sweepers, can do some work against Delver. I haven't won a lot against Delver recently, maybe cutting my maindeck spot removal had something to do with that. In fact i lost my last 10 matches against Grixis Delver - but almost directly before that i was 14-1 over 15 matches in a row, the variance is just extremely high. This is why i don't really want to post winrates for matchups - if i can go 14-1 into 0-10, how relevant are my winrates for matchups with 10-20 matches?
Knowing this deck makes it easier to play against it for sure, i'm getting more and more opponents who have seen my lists since they got posted. But the same is true the other way around, if i know what i'm playing against that heavily influences my strategy game 1. Since decklists get posted, that is very relevant online too.
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