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Thread: [Deck] Team America (BUG Delver)

  1. #3081
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    Re: [Deck] Team America (BUG Delver)

    It’s possible that Snare is nuts right now; years ago I spiked a fairly large legacy tournament running RUG where I played ZERO copies of Stifle, and FOUR of Spell Snare. Stifle is even better when you don’t have to waste a slot playing it, and Snare is a hard counter to plenty of problems and makes being on the draw a whole lot better.

    I think you could justifiably cut Hymn and instead go full Blue with the permission element of the deck, and have a great deck. I am not entirely sure if Stifle is essential though. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve played it and have done well with it in the past, but I am not so sure that it’s really so essential for this kind of deck.

    Alternatively, perhaps a Stifle + Sinkhole build? But Sinkhole just isn’t quite the card it used to be.

    And it’s also possible that we may see Astrolabe, Yorion, and maybe even Oko get the axe in the next Format update.

    Regardless, here’s the list I’ll be jamming for now, updates to come later:

    19 lands (8 fetch, 3/3/1 sea/trip/bayou; 4 wastes)
    1 Sylvan Library
    4 ponder
    4 brainstorm
    4 Daze
    4 FoWill
    4 ADecay
    2 FoNegation
    2 Oko, thief of crowns
    4 Hymn to Tourach
    4 Delver
    4 mongoose
    4 Tarmogoyf


    Sideboard:
    3 plague engineer
    2 veil of summer
    1 flusterstorm
    1 winter orb
    1 leovold
    1 seal of primordium (holdover from Lurrus; still a solid card and Goyf food — nice to have a preemptive out to Blood Moon too)
    1 null Rod (the ouphe is much easier to kill; plus you can cast this off non green lands)
    1 engineered explosives
    1 scavenging ooze
    1 nihil spellbomb
    1 cling to dust
    1 grafdigger’s cage


    I cut bitterlbossom from the main 60 but this might be wrong. Perhaps trade it with Sylvan Library. You could also consider the UG titan, but then you might end up with a bunch of 3 drops clogging your hand — and the card is only great if you get to actually unleash it.

    ADecay addresses mostly anything that gets thru your counter magic. This deck has a superior matchup against most combo decks than RUG, and also seems to have a better late game in general too.

    If you’re not playing Hymn (or some sort of targeted discard spell), why play black at all? Decay is good too, but again, if the incentive isn’t there to play black, RUG is just better generally thanks to Bolt and Pyroblast in the sideboard.

    Some other cards I’ve considered: Dark Confidant

    Cursed Scroll — so good in the mid and late game. Can address the issue of a stalled board and is often hard for non BUG decks to remove, especially game 1. Might be “too cute” though. Seems better than Aelopile due to the reusability. BUG tends to get hellbent by mid/late game, so activating it reliably isn’t that tough.

  2. #3082
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    Re: [Deck] Team America (BUG Delver)

    I should probably also mention, running Hymn, the deck likely wants to go back to 20 lands. So perhaps cutting the 2nd FoNegation for another fetch or the 4th Underground Sea.

    Alternatively, just run Inquisition of Kozilek and/or thoughtseize instead (leaning towards IoK tbh, as burn is a problem). There is definitely a tension between Mongoose and Hymn, as generally you’d prefer Sea to be your first land drop, not tropical (and almost never bayou, unless you really have no option).

    Targeted discard provides information too, which will help out with sequencing your plays too. Plus you can selectively nab whatever card is problematic for the current situation.

  3. #3083
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    Re: [Deck] Team America (BUG Delver)

    Quote Originally Posted by wcm8 View Post
    I should probably also mention, running Hymn, the deck likely wants to go back to 20 lands. So perhaps cutting the 2nd FoNegation for another fetch or the 4th Underground Sea.
    Yeah, I was just about to mention that. Even when we ran 4 DRS, and had 1 Lili and 3-4 Hymns, we were on 20 lands. And that was 4 Seas, 2 Bayou and only 1 Trop.

    Now, Wasteland is a little less prevalent now, but it is still "safer" I think, to go 20 and board one out when you won't need the one.
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  4. #3084
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    Re: [Deck] Team America (BUG Delver)

    Honestly dudes, the format is destabilized by the presence of Oko. I think there was a window of time when BUG Delver was far and away the BEST deck thanks to its ability to integrate Lurrus, but that time is ended.

    It is very hard now to justify running this version of BUG over RUG (which in addition to Oko, gets Bolts, Blasts, Uro, and Klothys, God of Destiny), it also can’t quite compete with the midrange redundancy of the 80 card Yorion Snowko lists. For an example of that:

    2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
    4 Oko, Thief of Crowns
    4 Baleful Strix
    4 Ice-Fang Coatl
    4 Snapcaster Mage
    3 Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath
    4 Preordain
    4 Abrupt Decay
    4 Brainstorm
    3 Force of Negation
    4 Force of Will
    4 Swords to Plowshares
    4 Arcum's Astrolabe
    4 Abundant Growth
    1 Karakas
    4 Misty Rainforest
    4 Polluted Delta
    4 Prismatic Vista
    4 Snow-Covered Forest
    6 Snow-Covered Island
    1 Snow-Covered Plains
    1 Snow-Covered Swamp
    1 Tropical Island
    1 Tundra
    1 Underground Sea

    Sideboard
    1 Force of Negation
    3 Dead of Winter
    4 Meddling Mage
    3 Null Rod
    3 Veil of Summer
    1 Yorion, Sky Nomad


    I think you can do well with a BUG deck, but the lists going forward are going to need a way of getting ahead of this deck specifically, at least until the next format update. I don’t think Hymn will really do that, as there is just so much card advantage and all your work can be undone by a resolved Yorion (which will flash all of their cantripping permanents and draw them a new hand).

    The irony is that Pyroblast is the best card against this sort of deck, as it answers the majority of the problematic cards.

    Spell Snare is quite powerful now as well. I suppose BUG does have the advantage of answering a resolved Oko a tad easier than RUG’s Bolts, but Decay can’t pivot and attack the opponent’s life total if you need to race.

    One alternative approach is to go midrange-y by running 4 Gilded Goose and playing 4 color. Goose will help you resolve more 2 and 3 drops faster than your opponent (as well as play thru opposing Daze), and fixes your mana as well as becoming an Elk later on and/or generating life gain over time. Green/Blue would be the primary colors, so I’m envisioning a deck running 4 tropical island, and then a 2/2 split of Volcanic Island and Underground sea. Then you get all of the ridiculous top end (Oko, Uro, Klothys), but can run Bolt AND Decay, as well as Black AND Red sideboard options.

    It might be worth it to run a Basic Forest in the sideboard as well (and therefore, running 4 Misty Rainforest and 4 other Green/X fetches) just to ensure you can fetch out a forest and be able to cast some of your important spells through a resolved Blood Moon, or insurance against Wasteland.

    Without having to overstuff the deck to 80, your silver bullets and sideboard also takes on much more value.

    Here’s what I’m thinking as a starting point:

    20 lands (4 waste, 4 trop, 2/2 sea/volc; 8 fetch)
    4 Gilded Goose
    4 Tarmogoyf
    4 Delver of Secrets
    1 Sylvan Library
    3 Oko
    1 Klothys
    4 Lightning Bolt
    3 Abrupt Decay (functions as “counter” to whatever gets thru standard counterspells)
    4 FoW
    4 Daze
    4 Brainstorm
    4 Ponder

    Sideboard:
    3 Pyro/REB
    2 Veil of Summer
    1 Grafdigger’s Cage
    1 Scavenging Ooze
    1 Cling to Dust
    1 Nihil Spellbomb
    3 Plague Engineer
    1 Leovold
    1 Null Rod
    1 Winter Orb

    Plague Engineer seems like a fairly good way of clearing the path against Strix/Coatl, as well as just destroying certain other decks (Elves, DnT by naming Human, etc.)

    I went a bit heavy in the sideboard on certain cards and graveyard hate, you could adjust these slots around and play basically whatever you wanted.

  5. #3085
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    Re: [Deck] Team America (BUG Delver)

    @wcm8
    I feel like Oko is the easiest part of these Snowko decks to deal with. What's hard to deal with is a wall of Strixes into Uro. At least you typically have a whole turn to answer Oko without losing card advantage. With your BURG list, you've got your three Oko's and Klothys maybe accelerated out by Goose but I'm not sure how great this really is against their wall of Strixes and removal (Klothys does seem pretty sweet but I'm not sure it can beat Snowko on it's own). It seems like the incentives are to go low with Delver and Stifle or go midrange with Snowko, I'm not sure how great straddling the middle is going to be. It's hard for me to imagine that Stifle isn't the card to be paired with Delver right now but I hope you figure something out. If I was running BUG I think Painful Truth's in the sideboard seems like the best way to make up ground against Snowko.
    Last edited by BKclassic; 05-22-2020 at 11:52 AM.

  6. #3086
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    Re: [Deck] Team America (BUG Delver)

    Quote Originally Posted by BKclassic View Post
    @wcm8
    I feel like Oko is the easiest part of these Snowko decks to deal with. What's hard to deal with is a wall of Strixes into Uro. At least you typically have a whole turn to answer Oko without losing card advantage. With your BURG list, you've got your three Oko's and Klothys maybe accelerated out by Goose but I'm not sure how great this really is against their wall of Strixes and removal (Klothys does seem pretty sweet but I'm not sure it can beat Snowko on it's own). It seems like the incentives are to go low with Delver and Stifle or go midrange with Snowko, I'm not sure how great straddling the middle is going to be. It's hard for me to imagine that Stifle isn't the card to be paired with Delver right now but I hope you figure something out. If I was running BUG I think Painful Truth's in the sideboard seems like the best way to make up ground against Snowko.
    Yes, that all seems very reasonable. And that's why I think RUG Delver is probably the best tempo deck right now. BUG doesn't seem as well equipped to just race the life totals. Red also has some very cheap and effective spells that clear the entire board of X/1 critters, e.g. Electrickery and that other Sorcery card (the name I forget, I think Instant speed is probably more important). Plus, you get Pyroblast, and still have access to a bunch of totally absurd value cards.

    Probably, Gilded Goose is not good enough to justify just running Mongoose of your own.

    I think you could basically run RUG Delver, with perhaps one or two Underground Sea in order to get access to Abrupt Decay and Black sideboard options if you really wanted.

    The RUG delver lists that are doing well resemble the following. Some variables include fitting in some number of Chain Lightning or other cheap removal, mixing up the creature base (some are running no Mongoose, and instead copies of Hooting Mandrills and/or Hexdrinker), variable numbers of counterspells and permission, and also sometimes you see a singleton Sylvan Library or the 9th cantrip (typically it's Preordain).

    So:

    18-19 Lands
    4 Mongoose
    4 Delver
    4 Goyf
    1 TNN // Scavenging Ooze // Brazen Borrower
    2 Oko
    1 Klothys
    4 Daze
    4 FoW
    4-5 Stifle // Spell Snare // Spell Pierce // Force of Negation // Flusterstorm
    0-2 Chain Lightning
    0-1 Sylvan Library // Preordain
    4 Bolt
    4 Brainstorm
    4 Ponder

    The best thing that Black is offering right now is Abrupt Decay. It gets you out of a TON of troublesome situations, and aside from Veil of Summer (which lately tends to just be in the sideboard, and often only as a 2-of), it can't really be answered. It provides an elegant solution to most of the problematic cards in the format. I like Fatal Push, but it's just DEAD against combo decks and only marginally useful against control decks. I'd much rather run Bolts, as at least they help you race. It's true that a resolved Tarmogoyf can be a problem, but that's also why perhaps a singleton Scavenging Ooze may be worth running somewhere in the 75, as a way of going above your opponent's own Goyfs.

    I also really like Plague Engineer and Bitterblossom, but aside from those, most of what Black has on offer can be achieved similarly in RUG's pool of cards. Liliana and other Black planeswalkers aren't really strong enough in comparison to Oko (which is like a one-card combo; he can end the game all on his own and also can help stabilize against an opponent if you can protect him well. That's why I think Force of Negation and perhaps Flusterstorm are worth running alongside him). And I also think that Klothys is a maindeck-worthy inclusion as both a late/mid-game finisher, as well as a disruptive element against decks that utilize the graveyard in some form or fashion. It's legendary and costs quite a bit, so I would not really want to run more than 1, but if it lands it provides so much value and can end the game. It's also really difficult to deal aside from on the stack, so it's better than Sulfuric Vortex as well. You'll basically never turn it into a creature, so it dodges Swords to Plowshares 99.9% of the time too.

    Idk, it's just a very frustrating time to be playing Legacy. So much of the draw was having a variety of archetypes that each had justifiable reasons to run one over the other. Lately though it just seems that there's no reason to justify BUG over RUG if you're playing tempo. Perhaps losing Oko and/or Astrolabe (and Yorin) would shake up the format again. I'm not sure why they didn't just hit ALL companions in one fell swoop; 80 cards is hardly an issue when you have plenty of duplicate options.

    Oh, and here's a possible suggestion for beating the wall of X/1 critters with RUG: GRIM LAVAMANCER, and/or CURSED SCROLL.

    With the former you probably dump Mongoose and just run it in that slot; probably running some number of Hooting Mandrills and/or Hexdrinker as well since they don't care about Threshold. The Lavamancers can clear the way for your other dudes, or just throw chunks of 2 damage at your opponents face. Cursed Scroll is probably just too expensive for RUG to be activating, but has the advantage of not interfering with your own creature base and there are plenty of scenarios in the mid/late game where you only have 1 card in hand and enough mana to activate it every turn. If it gets countered/destroyed, at least you grow your Goyf. Both of these are main-deckable and especially good against some other matchups like Elves, D&T, Infect, etc.

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