[Deck] Canadian Threshold (aka RUG Delver, Tempo Thresh)

[Bed Decks Palyer]

if u think delver on turn 1 is wrong, stop playin tempo
if ur opponent wastes you after turn 1 delver, thx for timewalk for free :)

This is not exactly true, although my knee-jerk reaction was "play Delver!"
An opponent that Wastelands my only land might be in fact a pretty clever. (Not even considering G. Probe that revealed my weakness.) RUG is known for its tight and greedy manabase and shaky keeps. If his hand is nothing but lands and removal, he may try to cut me of lands, effectively stopping my development at all. Next thing in line is to remove the Delver, which is especially easy considering I got no Island to pay for Daze. (Lets say I drawn no land and he got his one for Bolt/Swords/Disfigure.) I met opponents who gladly exchanged a few life points just to make sure I'll never return to game.
I'm not saying that th whole "Delver, go" is a bad plan, and it has its pros like applying pressure, seeing more cards in next turn's Ponder, etc. But saying that it's the only possible play, that anyone daring to evaluate the situation otherwise should stop playing tempo, or that it's a fool-proof plan, is not true. Because I lost fair amount of games with exactly this kind of plays.

[snorlaxcom]

What do you think of this recent list by Steve Mann http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=77678

I love this classic archetype and thread, but this is not rug and belongs in ur thread. Just look at the manabase. No wastelands/stifles with only 2 daze? Nothing rug about that. This isn't 2008 anymore where you jam goyf (and grip) into everything. The meta for that event was anything but representative of the current state of legacy. So many entrants were trying to mindgame and go deep into solving the 16 person meta (which is fine with thousands at stake).

During coverage of his match it was reported he didn't test the deck much before registration either.

I snap waste t1 when I see stifle mana gone and the percentage of you having another blue is so low. I'm used to you trying to ride a delver. I would also like to prevent a goyf from showing up and having a hand with 3 lands is even less likely after I fire a waste. Having a delver go the distance has been very rare in my exp and your fumbling manabase is more of a sure thing. Just my 2 cents as the guy on the other side of the table on the draw.


Oh and a happy new year!

[Contract Killer]

Hello everybody,
i recently discussed watching a SCG video with some friends about starting a game with RUG delver.

When you are on the play and don't know what your opponent is playing it's sometimes difficult to choose the best way to start. For example, that seems a good hand:
delver of secrets
Spell Pierce
Brainstorm
Fetch
Wasteland
Ponder
Lightning Bolt

Knowing what tour opponent is playing is easy:

• fetch-delver against control or not winning turn 1 combos
• fetch-go against the rest to be able to :
  
  • play pierce
  • protect your only blue land against a possible wasteland
  • kill a mana curve creature like deathrite shaman at end of opponent's turn
  • playing brainstorm at end of opponent's turn if nothing before happened for better choose what to do in your next turn
  
  

If you don't know what your opponent is playing, what would be your start?
thanks and happy new year!

Anybody who grapples with these lines of play either don't play tempo very often or are new to playing the rug. Either is a fine reason we all have to start somewhere right? If you're on the play with that hand there's really only 2 lines of play and personally I only think one is good.

delver of secrets
Spell Pierce
Brainstorm
Fetch
Wasteland
Ponder
Lightning Bolt

So for starters on the play in the blind with this I would do the following T1: fetch -> volcanic -> delver pass. If you worry about keeping one land hands with tempo decks then you should choose another deck. We play 14 colored sources and if you start with ponder and brick forced to shuffle then next turn you still have to play out your threat, still won't have a second land, and still won't have protection.

The land choice I will admit is a crap shoot in the blind. I personally would go with volcanic so we have access to bolt for whatever turn 1 crit they may play which could very well be drs. There is an argument for getting trop that way if they do take delver out and we ponder turn 2 it's easier to find another threat. In the blind both are valid and you just have to roll the dice. Against something like Jund or UWR delver decks that have like 8+ removal I would go for trop since it's likely we won't be able to protect our threat forever.

Now if you're worried about someone playing wasteland turn 1 against you don't. Anyone who has played legacy long enough knows that playing out a wasteland turn 1 when a tempo deck has a turn 1 threat is straight up bad. Our whole game plan is to keep their lands off the table to make our cheap permission better. If they wasteland us turn 1 and we have another land it's really bad for them. All playing wasteland does for them is make our daze/pierce that much better. If someone wastelands you off the bat they're playing loose if you ask me. The risk is just too high for the opponent to wasteland us turn 1.

Finally if you worry about someone trying to remove delver turn 1 it's something that you can't always avoid. Most opponents will try to wait until they are out of daze range or have their own pierce/force back up. This is mainly because tempo decks have 8 free counter spells. Opponents who do jam removal turn 1 have excess removal, countermagic to back up their removal, are calling your bluff or just have a bad hand and know they need to get delver off the table if they want any chance.

As for knowing what you're playing against that becomes more complicated. Still for the most part if you're on the play turn 1 delver is right against anything. Combo decks that can go off turn 1 SnT, reanimator or storm are holding 4 aces to go off turn 1 and not care about daze or force. At that point if their hand is:
Show and tell
griselbrand
ancient tomb
petal
force
blue card
X
Then you just have bad luck because that's the god hand and it will beat just about anything. On the draw against combo you usually want to wait until turn 2 or 3 to play a threat so you can hold up pierce/snare or something.

Any tempo mirrors these days on the draw you usually have to kill a turn 1 threat (delver, drs, mother, etc) if possible and end up having to play a ponder or bolt.

Miracles is a strange beast on the draw because they kind of have a pseudo combo against us (top + counterbalance). If they have turn 1 island -> top then I would hold up mana, but if they go plains -> top or island -> ponder than just play out your delver/goose. Miracles usually won't care about delver knowing how many outs they have to it as the game progresses. What this means to us is even on the draw we can probably get a few beats in with delver before the get rid of it.

To be honest eventually if you play a tempo deck long enough these lines of play just become second nature. I've been playing rug for about 2 years mainly due to financial reasons (and it's grown on me lol). I'm not an amazing player, but I know the deck like the back of my hand. If you want some real good advice follow Jacob Wilson's videos from about a year and half or two years ago. Despite them being old videos the lines of play are the same and rug's game plan / match ups haven't changed because fundamentally it's still a tier 1 deck. Many aspects of rug delver haven't changed over the past 2 years with the deck:
delver still is a house
goose is arguably the best or second best threat
bolt is still the best removal
people still run into snare/pierce after playing around daze or vice versa
when people play around daze/pierce force might still get them

Overall rug is a hard deck to play against and so long as you play tight most opponents will make a mistake somewhere along the lines and when you capitalize on that it's an easy win.

[sawatarix]

Happy New Year Mongoose-Fans ;)

[BKclassic]

Casting Delver of Secrets in the blind is a pretty darn good play. But turn 1 Wasteland, Turn 2 kill Delver is an effective play also. If the opponent Wastelands me, there is only a 45% chance I draw one of my 12 blue sources (only 12 left after the fetch) in the next 2 draw steps and a 69% chance of drawing a blue source in the next 3 draw steps. The opponent is probably getting at least 2-3 turns of unencumbered development most likely resulting in our losing.

But say I'm on the play Game 3 against Uwr Delver, so I know my opponent is on Wasteland, Bolt and StP. The example hand is basically a God hand, if I'm able to just stay in the game and play spells, I'm around 75% to win. There's a 57% chance my opponent sees Wasteland in their first 8 cards. It is probably about 40-45% chance our opponent will be able to succeed in his or her Wasteland gambit.

So for the rational Threshold player, it should come down to whether playing Ponder instead of Delver increases your chances of losing to more than the chance of losing to a Wasteland blowout. With the given hand, I can win as long as I can play spells and interact, so I will gladly Ponder for another land to keep me in the game.

[Contract Killer]

Casting Delver of Secrets in the blind is a pretty darn good play. But turn 1 Wasteland, Turn 2 kill Delver is an effective play also. If the opponent Wastelands me, there is only a 45% chance I draw one of my 12 blue sources (only 12 left after the fetch) in the next 2 draw steps and a 69% chance of drawing a blue source in the next 3 draw steps. The opponent is probably getting at least 2-3 turns of unencumbered development most likely resulting in our losing.

But say I'm on the play Game 3 against Uwr Delver, so I know my opponent is on Wasteland, Bolt and StP. The example hand is basically a God hand, if I'm able to just stay in the game and play spells, I'm around 75% to win. There's a 57% chance my opponent sees Wasteland in their first 8 cards. It is probably about 40-45% chance our opponent will be able to succeed in his or her Wasteland gambit.

So for the rational Threshold player, it should come down to whether playing Ponder instead of Delver increases your chances of losing to more than the chance of losing to a Wasteland blowout. With the given hand, I can win as long as I can play spells and interact, so I will gladly Ponder for another land to keep me in the game.

For starters the chance of someone having a wasteland in their first 8 cards is only 36%. Probability in magic is based off of hypergeometrics. Here's a brief crash course on it:
http://www.gatheringmagic.com/chrism...-distribution/
Now if you don't want to bother understanding all of the math just look at the variables and you can plug them into a calculator:
http://stattrek.com/online-calculato...geometric.aspx

Let's look at the chance for seeing a second land off of ponder.
Population size (deck): 52 assuming we fetch (Whether we fetch or not isn't even going to change the margin by 0.01%)
sample size (cards drawn): in this case it's 3 because of ponder
number of successes in population (how many lands in the deck): 12 again based off of us fetching
successes in sample (number of lands we want in the 3 cards): 1
Average percentage of drawing a second land off of ponder turn 1 = 42%

That data essentially says roughly 3/5 games that you try a turn 1 ponder for a second land it will not work. The odds are against us if only by 8%. On the other hand our opponent will only have wasteland roughly 1/3 games on turn 1. So overall there's a 58% we brick on pond turn 1 or we can look at the bright side that there's only a 36% chance our opponent will have wasteland turn 1. I mean I'll gamble my opponent having wasteland turn 1 over trying to ponder out a second land any day with those odds.

Essentially there's a chance we concede 1/3 games if the opponent plays wasteland turn 1. So if we take the ponder route we do nothing turn 1, and still won't have a second land turn 2 3/5 games. There's also roughly 1/3 games that this plan will backfire on our opponent because we will have 2 lands in hand. The odds are in our favor in numerous ways to not ponder turn 1 and to instead play out delver.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

For starters the chance of someone having a wasteland in their first 8 cards is only 36%. Probability in magic is based off of hypergeometrics. Here's a brief crash course on it:
http://www.gatheringmagic.com/chrism...-distribution/
Now if you don't want to bother understanding all of the math just look at the variables and you can plug them into a calculator:
http://stattrek.com/online-calculato...geometric.aspx

Let's look at the chance for seeing a second land off of ponder.
Population size (deck): 52 assuming we fetch (Whether we fetch or not isn't even going to change the margin by 0.01%)
sample size (cards drawn): in this case it's 3 because of ponder
number of successes in population (how many lands in the deck): 12 again based off of us fetching
successes in sample (number of lands we want in the 3 cards): 1
Average percentage of drawing a second land off of ponder turn 1 = 42%

That data essentially says roughly 3/5 games that you try a turn 1 ponder for a second land it will not work. The odds are against us if only by 8%. On the other hand our opponent will only have wasteland roughly 1/3 games on turn 1. So overall there's a 58% we brick on pond turn 1 or we can look at the bright side that there's only a 36% chance our opponent will have wasteland turn 1. I mean I'll gamble my opponent having wasteland turn 1 over trying to ponder out a second land any day with those odds.

Essentially there's a chance we concede 1/3 games if the opponent plays wasteland turn 1. So if we take the ponder route we do nothing turn 1, and still won't have a second land turn 2 3/5 games. There's also roughly 1/3 games that this plan will backfire on our opponent because we will have 2 lands in hand. The odds are in our favor in numerous ways to not ponder turn 1 and to instead play out delver.

Thanks, that was really helpful!
Btw, I'm going to go "Thinking" every time I open a hand with two colored lands, and then I'd hesitantly play Delver with much mumbling so that I trick my opponents into turn1 Waste me.
Hope it'll work.

[wbw]

Thanks, that was really helpful!
Btw, I'm going to go "Thinking" every time I open a hand with two colored lands, and then I'd hesitantly play Delver with much mumbling so that I trick my opponents into turn1 Waste me.
Hope it'll work.

To make sure your opponent tilts, remember to say "Top deck!" when playing the second land.

[Contract Killer]

Thanks, that was really helpful!
Btw, I'm going to go "Thinking" every time I open a hand with two colored lands, and then I'd hesitantly play Delver with much mumbling so that I trick my opponents into turn1 Waste me.
Hope it'll work.

No problem. A year ago I was interested in how the probability in magic worked so I did some research. I actually tried writing my own java program to find probability of cards in a magic deck. Needless to say it was a bit of a nightmare and I gave up too man variables to keep track of, store, switch into other equations, and then display.

[M+1]

Let's look at the chance for seeing a second land off of ponder.
Population size (deck): 52 assuming we fetch (Whether we fetch or not isn't even going to change the margin by 0.01%)
sample size (cards drawn): in this case it's 3 because of ponder
number of successes in population (how many lands in the deck): 12 again based off of us fetching
successes in sample (number of lands we want in the 3 cards): 1
Average percentage of drawing a second land off of ponder turn 1 = 42%

You seem to be forgetting the shuffle option on Ponder, and the fact that succes is at least 1 land (not exactly 1).

[Bed Decks Palyer]

To make sure your opponent tilts, remember to say "Top deck!" when playing the second land.

Huh, how could I forget! Good idea...

You seem to be forgetting the shuffle option on Ponder, and the fact that succes is at least 1 land (not exactly 1).

Well, that's true. I'd be interested how the shuffle part changes the percentage.

[tescrin]

Looks like I can't put an image up (as evidence) without hosting; so instead I'll just say:
Changing to "at least 1" means you have a 54.5% chance to find a land without shuffle (This means, BS *or* Ponder gives you this percentage)
Changing to "at least 1" with a shuffle (I.E. see 4) is roughly 65.4%***

I used deckulator with the values:
12/1
41/0
Draw 3 and 4 respectively.

***The draw 4 is flawed because it doesn't account for the +3 cards that will be in the deck after "Draw 3" into shuffle. It is likely more like 63%, but I am lazy.

EDIT:
Curiousity defeated my laziness, but I think my result is still flawed. I went with:
12/1
41/0
Draw 3
called P(A)

I then did
12/1
41/0
Draw 1
called P(B)

and then ((1-P(A)) * P(B)) + P(A) which resulted in 64.7%, which is higher than the draw 4, but i'm pretty sure that doesn't make sense.

Either way, you have a ~60-65% chance of seeing your land with a T1 ponder on the play. If you T1 ponder and are worried about T1 wasteland you have about a .35 * .39 chance of getting screwed (13.65%.) If you T1 Delver you have a 22.5% chance of seeing a colored land anyway, so you have a .78 * .39 (30.4%) chance of being screwed.

I think the T1 ponder makes good sense if they're a player known for aggressive wastelands as you have a much higher chance of being timewalked. I have no idea why the previous posters used .30% chance of wasteland over 39%. People usually run 4 if they run them.

[sawatarix]

Well let's hope that Treasure Cruise gets the banhammer so that nimble mongoose can revive again ;D
It is by far the best creature RUG has to offer and i would always play 4 if the format allowes me to do that (which is not the case at the moment)

[FelsKlette]

Happy new year!

I didn't write anything in a forum for quite a while now but reading all those flawed percentages made me register an account here to enlighten you guys

- The chance for you drawing a second land with your t1 ponder is 65.6%. If you consider that you will draw another card at your next drawstep you are at 73.7%.
55.29% for the first 3 cards, another 23.08% after shuffeling and 23.53% at the next drawstep; so we have 1-(1-0,5529)*(1-0,2308)*(1-0,2353) =0,7370
(fyi: if ponder was draw 4 instead the chance was 66.24% rather than 65.6%. The chance for a first turn BS finding a 2. land is only 55.29% + you waste your next 2 drawsteps! )

- The chance for drawing a second land during your regular drawstep is 23.08%

- The chance of your opponent having a wasteland in his first 8 is 44.48%

So the chance of you getting screwed in this scenario is 11.7% with ponder and 34.21% without! This ignores the chance that they might not use their Wasteland even if they have it. Imo this chance is affected by our first turn play: If we play delver we put pressure on them so they might very well have other things to do - if we ponder instead, we show weakness which might induce them to waste us.

What the guy on the other side of the table should consider when thinking about whether or not to use his wasteland is that I still have 5 cards in my hand and I will draw another one next turn. With 12 lands remaining in my library this makes ̶7̶̶7̶̶.̶̶5̶̶5̶% 82.36% (for the first 5 cards theres still 13 availible lands not 12) that his attempt will fail and all he did was giving me a free timewalk...

Consindering all those numbers I think it's definitely the best play to lead with delver, probably even if I know for certain that I am up against a wasteland-deck. And for the opponent I guess with most hands without probes it's best not to go the wasteland route. They can still try for that if I miss my landdrop on turn 2 - even if it's way less poweful then, due to stifle + we get another chance to BS/ponder.

(edited for correction)

[BKclassic]

Well let's hope that Treasure Cruise gets the banhammer so that nimble mongoose can revive again ;D
It is by far the best creature RUG has to offer and i would always play 4 if the format allowes me to do that (which is not the case at the moment)

I would argue that Nimble Mongoose is better positioned in the metagame than it was pre-Treasure Cruise. Granted I primarily play online and so my observations come from dealing with the online metagame.
-Before Treasure Cruise, RUG Delver was the best Delver deck in non-Delver matchups. Nimble Mongoose is a much more robust threat than Deathrite Shaman against Miracles and Deathblade and a faster threat against combo (although graveyard interaction can certainly be invaluable). Deathrite Shaman-Delver builds, BUG and bUrg Delver, while less potent against non-Delver decks, are great against RUG Delver since Deathrite Shaman is so antithetical to Nimble Mongoose and our gameplan. There wasn't really a way to improve our chances against Deathrite Shaman without running the card ourselves, making these match-ups structurally difficult. As opposed to difficult match-ups like Maverick, which can be hard, but is reasonably winnable with sideboard considerations, where there aren't many great sideboard cards to hose Deathrite Shaman when it's in a Delver deck.
-Post Treasure Cruise, UR Delver is the new baseline Delver deck and, unlike BUG and bUrg, is a good match up. They don't have any good answers against to our large green creatures. Nimble Mongoose specifically is great because it has shroud, so they can't use burn spells on it that would let the UR player fill their graveyard and cast another Treasure Cruise. Game 1 can be difficult if they get a Young Pyromancer out of control, but post board Rough/Tumble is amazing. My record against UR Delver is around 10-2 in tournament matches. The decks that pray on Treasure Cruise decks that people are playing are pretty beatable as well. Chalice of the Void/Trinishphere decks aren't especially consistent, RUG Delver is the blue deck running the most Daze's and Spell Pierces and we have Ancient Grudge. Elves, Death and Taxes, Miracles, Sneak Attack and Storm aren't always easy but basically come down to who the better player is and who built their deck better. Apparently BUG Delver is a deck to beat still, but it unlike RUG Delver, BUG Delver matches up poorly against UR Delver where Deathrite Shaman gets burned quickly and doesn't do all that much. I don't see anyone playing Deathrite Shaman in Delver decks anymore online. So now that the BUG and bUrg decks are on the decline, RUG Delver is back to being the undisputed Delver champion, IMO.

[sawatarix]

Thx for the short Metagame summary.
I still believe that playing a delver deck without a carddrawengine (i'm talking about cruise ;D )
is not competitive enough right now.
I mean,would you play this deck when all other players slam their 1 mana ancestral recalls on the table?
In my opinion there are 2 options:
1. play cruise ourselves somehow,my buddy BB8
has been victorious so far.
(Claudio Bonanni at TC Decks)

2. Play another carddrawmachine such as sylvan library and standstill

Without those cards we are trading 1 for 1 during the first turns only to get frustrated if our opponent
refreshes his hand and board during turn 4-6.
That's normally the point of the game where we have 0 cards in hand.

[FelsKlette]

What the guy on the other side of the table should consider when thinking about whether or not to use his wasteland is that I still have 5 cards in my hand and I will draw another one next turn. With 12 lands remaining in my library this makes ̶7̶̶7̶̶.̶̶5̶̶5̶% 82.36% (for the first 5 cards theres still 13 availible lands not 12) that his attempt will fail and all he did was giving me a free timewalk...

When I thought about this a little more I realized that it is bullshit...obviously even I make mistakes

As I already played a land card from my hand the remaining 5 cards are no longer random and thus can't be treated like any 5 random cards from the library!
So we have to look at the probability for the whole 7card-hand to contain no more than one land. I'd assume that hands with 4+ colored lands are mulligan anyway so I will ignore those.
Here we go: 33,95% hands with 1 land, 32,30% with 2, 15,38% with 3 lands and 18.37% mulligan hands with either 0 or 4+ lands.
This makes 41.59% of the relevant hands containing only 1 colored land! So wasting the opponents land will leave him screwed for at least one turn in 31,99% and for at least two turns in 24,46%.

But I still think that this gamble ain't woth it. Especially as the opponent doesn't even know that we are on canadian. For all he knows we could as well be UR-delver or patriot... AfaIk both of these decks play more colored lands and thus are less likely to have no second land!

[BKclassic]

@Sawatrix-
I would invite you to consider this article by Gerry Thompson http://www.starcitygames.com/article...Mattering.html

Basically he makes the point that in Magic's current age, card advantage is secondary to tempo in terms of what wins games of Magic. Treasure Cruise is basically the ultimate case in point. Since Treasure Cruise opponents want to run a 16 cantrip build (4 BS, 4 Ponder, 4 Probe, 4 Cruise) in order to utilize Treasure Cruise effectively and since Treasure Cruise is incompatible with graveyard based green creatures, there is a lot space for us to tempo our opponents out of the game. Mostly Nimble Mongoose, but to a lesser extent Tarmogoyf, are effective against Treasure Cruise, similar to how Storm decks are effective against Treasure Cruise. Granted, we are not quickly comboing our opponents out through modicum of disruption, but the constraints Treasure Cruise puts on our opponents deck make it hard for our them to interact effectively with us. They need to take time to cast tons of cantrips to find action, their removal does not kill our large green creatures, our answers match their threats, and Treasure Cruise just draws them into more of the same. Our strategy results in our green creatures being able to create enough virtual card advantage to outpace our Treasure Cruise opponents.

It is true that there are Treasure Cruise builds that we don’t match up well against. BUG Delver is mostly unbeatable, but UR Delver stomps all over it and consequently is not being played much, I’ve only had one match against BUG since Treasure Cruise was released.

The decks trying to hate on Treasure Cruise are pretty beatable as well. Compared UR Cruise decks, we are better prepared to beat decks like Chalice Aggro, Death and Taxes and Storm since slots that would be wasted on cantrips can be used for answers and Tarmogoyf is typically much better than Young Pyromancer against these kind of decks.

So I certainly agree that getting a Treasure Cruise resolved against us is not good news, but card advantage isn’t everything. I don’t play a ton of MODO but I have been able to 3-1 a bunch daily’s and 4-0 a couple since Treasure Cruise was released, I’m up about 150 tickets from winning with RUG Delver in November and December.

[Grand Superior]

So, uh... Kird Ape.

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=78736

I don't currently play this deck myself, but I'm interested in seeing what you guys have to say about this. Both Canadian Threshold lists in that top 8 had a full set of Kird Ape.

[Lemnear]

So, uh... Kird Ape.

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=78736

I don't currently play this deck myself, but I'm interested in seeing what you guys have to say about this. Both Canadian Threshold lists in that top 8 had a full set of Kird Ape.

Does not die to Forked Bolt. A certain edge in the URx mirror