Amusingly enough, the classic Hymn/Liliana builds of BUG Delver have a pretty reasonable Merfolk matchup since they can operate quite well off of Bayou, Bayou, DRS. Also, Liliana and Hymn are great against Vial decks.Originally Posted by Secretly.A.Bee
As for if Dig gets banned, I think that BUG will go back to being the best Delver deck...overall? Pre-Khans, it was the best Delver deck in Delver mirrors, the best Delver deck against combo, and no worse than RUG against Miracles. I guess it was slightly weaker against Jund, so we'll see how the BGx portion of the meta arranges itself should Dig get the axe.
I think you want more Digs. Honestly, I'd probably start from one of the PIQ lists from this weekend if you're new to the deck. At the very least, you should make a sideboard as an exercise. It's not walled off from your starting 60 - in fact, your maindeck should reflect what you expect to have in your sideboard. It's not just a matter of making in/out tables (I don't find that helpful, fwiw); it's about knowing that you can bias your main toward an expected meta without giving up generality from the board or vice-versa.
I hate Hymn/lili builds, but I'm a blue mage first, so it stands to reason that I would hate a deck designed to tap out.
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Is there a proactive reason to be playing the PIQ BUG lists rather than just jumping ship to Grixis? What does cutting red for green actually accomplish in a Dig-centered metagame (i.e. where Miracles, Omnitell, and Grixis are on top)? Tarmogoyf routinely loses to Angler and it's worse against Miracles than Pyromancer. Decay is good versus Miracles, but it's a reliable option in the SB of Grixis just because there are no Wastelands in that matchup. Decay is also awful against Omnitell, bad versus Angler, and only good versus Pyromancer if you have it within 0-2 turns of Pyromancer resolving. Not having Blasts also makes the Delver mirrors harder.
Easy there, Negative Nancy. How do you think goyf is worse than YP against Miracles when it often requires virtual card disadvantage to get the same power on the board? TNN and Angler are both options here as well, not synonymous with grixis, and that makes goyf a reasonable choice after the inclusion of either. Black has many options for removal in the form of disfigure, dismember and Murderous Cut (the last two of which does deal with Angler, but my personal preference is Reality Shift and Echoing Truth), and blasts and bolts are as bad against goyf/angler as decays are against angler, so I feel like that's a moot point. We also often play golgari charm out of the board, which is solid against the all 3 of the main decks we are discussing. There's also Krosan Grip for Omni, and I often play at least 1 Meekstone in my board so I can shut down the fatties of the format and overwhelm my opponent with Deathrite activations.
Decay deals with Mentor. Impossible to do with blasts and almost impossible to do with a bolt.
My thoughts on this is playstyle. Do you like the reach red gives, or do you prefer to play your 200 dollar a pop creatures?
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I do like having access to at least one additional creature threat in my maindeck. It's been everything from a true-name, to an angler, to a vendilion clique. I really only cast true-name a couple times in this particular tournament, but I like him because he doesn't use the graveyard like goyf or angler, is hard to answer once he resolves, and can either serve as an all purpose blocker or a way to slip the last few points of damage through. It was actually relevant against dark maverick when they used knight for maze of ith. He gives the bug deck a bit of pseudo-reach. Also, Liliana is way down in the format and he can be pitched to force unlike angler or tombstalker.
Disfigure was dead in my hand in any matchup when killing creatures was irrelevant. Any time the game was about having creature threats, I really liked having access to disfigure. Noah Walker chose to play 2 dismember, 1 golgari charm while I opted for 2 disfigure, 1 dismember. As far as I'm concerned, the number of creatures that I commonly see that die to neither decay nor disfigure is exactly 1. Gurmag angler. Thus, I opted for more disfigures in order to answer the more commonly seen creatures more quickly and efficiently. I would go up on dismembers if a list like Kendrick's in the top 8 took off. He was much heavier on delve beaters than normal. So while Noah's list gets some insulation from x/1 creatures with Charm, I opted for disfigure to gun down opposing x/2 creatures.
I love stifle, and I like to think that I'm always able to come up with a couple good uses for it. That being said, I found that the majority of threats can be answered with pierce/thoughtseize and removal in a more efficient manner than stifle + removal. There are some niche cases where stifle is absolutely insane (stifle kuldotha forgemaster activation, rest in peace trigger, miracle trigger, veteran explorer trigger, etc.) and I would rather have it in my deck than pierce/thoughtseize but when I do play with stifle I find myself missing the thoughtseizes and pierces more.
Just my opinion. I could be (probably am) very, very wrong.
I too love Stifle. How many do you generally run? Stifle is pretty bad against Omni, but does a lot of good work against the other monsters of the format, and are good options to board out in the matchups it is weak, making sb'ing a veritable breeze.
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Stifle is good against Omni
What am I missing?
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They run 9 fetches. I had omni players spell Pierce stifles. Like they were dependent on that land drop.
Hmm. Maybe. Wasteland is pretty bad here (I know that they play sol lands and boseiju) and it seems that it would be minimal as far as disruption goes with all the cantrips they play. I may be wrong, as I almost never get to test the matchup. Any omni players reading this have any opinions?
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I test the most with omni, granted I play Grixis Delver, I do love my WL's.
A few lists run Bosei main, and being able to WL that is great. Also WL'ing their volcs to keep them off red if they don't play around WL is also great.
We play 4x Wasteland, hence the discussion of Stifle. The question is about Stifle, not Wasteland. I understand that there are targets for both, the question remains as to whether or not it is a real strategy against the omni list overall. Does it often allow for a win with the inclusion of its strategy or will it more often than not lead to dead draws, wasted space and in the end, a loss?
Wasteland Targets: ?x Volcanic Island, 1-2 Boseiju, ?x Sol Lands.
Stifle Targets: 8-10 fetches, YP triggers.
Did I miss anything? If not, this is the discussion list. I normally play 3x Stifle, as 1-a-game is, in my experience, the average useful number of Stifles per game, especially when paired with the full set of Wastelands, Dazes, and 2-3x Spell Pierce. They can be a worse dead draw than both daze and pierce, and often make Brainstorm better just by having an auto-pick to put back for it. They are one more thing for people to play around for game 2, and that makes them almost as effective in the sideboard as they were in the main.
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If they bring in YP against you game 2...that is stupid of them.
Why? If our entire plan relies on countering/surgicaling SnT, it's a back up plan. Unless we are expecting YP you are not going to board in creature hate so young pyro is just going to run rampant
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On our end, we bring in 1 clique, 1-2 flusterstorm, 1 surgical, 2 thoughtseize. Out - 4 abrupt decay, 1 goyf, 1 miscellaneous.
They bring in 2 pyroblast, 1 flusterstorm, (your proposal, bring in 3 yp). Out. 3 git probe, please name 3 other cards they can possibly take out.
Like i said, the YP is for matches such as miracles when the game goes long and you can damage them with the creatures. The mirror, because resolving a show and tell in the mirror is one hell of a problem if you have less instants than they do.
If we happen to surgical their show and tell, they can go through the breach
I just think this means that Thoughtseize is the better card for the slot. I love Stifle in RUG, but BUG isn't as tempo-oriented as RUG is - we can afford to slug it out a bit more sinve our cards are more powerful. Also, Thoughtseize is arguably the single best card against Omni, since people keep talking so much about how to beat it.
I never said it was optimal for them to bring it in, also though, there are variations of Omni, Demon Rum, that sometimes run it in the main. It wasn't a scenario I spoke of, but it is a thing.
I prefer my Thoughtseizes to be in the board, but my meta isn't combo oriented. 1 demon rum, 1 storm list, no miracles. it's hard to test for regional events here.
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I think we're back in the driver's seat now!
So would this mean that the hymn version is the better version now that lili and hymn are back in contention?
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All I know is that I prefer the flow of the Lili+Hymn version so this is good news for me anyway, even if it's a bit behind the Stifle build.
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