I have a general question. If you have 2 mana, no threats on board and Young P in hand; do you play the young p and leave it unprotected on the board? Or do you hold it until you at least have a counter/cantrip to get some value out of him?
I agree with Deathrite over Delver 100%. DRS can even be better against "faster" decks like ANT because it also disrupts.
That super depends on the matchup and your other cards in hand. You just can't say that generally, but against a Delver opponent e.g. I prefer to play YP as late as possible (unless they're playing discard to get it out my hand) to have as many mana open as possible. It's also the reason why I went down to 3.
The main reason I don't run 4 is because of potential 2-for-1s in the form of Forked Bolt, Golgari Charm, Rough, Zealous Persecution etc., pretty much every fair deck runs some of these in the sideboard.
That said Vendilion Clique helps here at least against the red ones since they're all sorceries. Personally I don't play Clique only because it interferes with my mana-denial plan via stifle.
Btw, Andrea Mengucci posted some matches with Grixis Delver (forked bolt, spell pierce, 2 therapies version) on youtube, make sure to check them out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbdm...Gy8O_XSO6Xr7av
While not especially familiar with the deck he plays a lot of legacy and also a lot of delver so while some of his sideboarding might be slightly off his ingame decisions are often times top notch!
So I'm going to a smallish tournament on Sunday and I figured I'd sleeve up grixis delver as a decent shot against a random unknown field (last time I played there was September last year, so any incling as to an expected meta is probably out the window) and is a deck I've got the most experience with.
My main issue is I need to cut my sideboard down to 15 cards but I'm struggling to leave things out, so figured I'd let other people influence it. The sideboard currently looks like this:
1 pithing needle
1 tormod's crypt
1 grafdigger's cage
2 submerge
2 surgical extraction
1 sulfuric vortex
1 darkblast
2 flusterstorm
1 ancient grudge
2 pyroblast
3 cabal therapy
1 winter orb
Last time I played there, there was a couple of mud players, a painter deck, various combo decks (ant, food chain, couple of tes and a reanimator) miracles, elves, stoneblade, show and tell, Norfolk, goblins and some others I've forgotten about. I realise that this is going to be the basis of the meta with more than likely some eldrazi stompy and lands / aggro loam as well (eldrazi look like they're everywhere around here in every format, chances are they'll show up in some form and I know one or two of the regulars at this shop have done well at larger tournaments recently with lands and aggro loam).
The main deck is a pretty standard looking affair:
4 delver of secrets
4 deathrite shaman
3 young pyromancer
1 vendilion clique
2 gurmag angler
4 force of will
4 daze
4 brainstorm
4 ponder
4 stifle
4 gitaxian probe
4 lightning bolt
4 wasteland
4 scalding tarn
4 polluted delta
3 volcanic island
2 underground sea
1 tropical island
Any help would be greatly appreciated with this.
Main Board
-1 Vendillion Clique
-1 Stifle or Gitaxian Probe
+2 Cabal Therapys
SB
-1 Submerge
+2 Spellpierce
However you fit them in, can't go wrong in a unknown meta.
@and3h: You probably don't want Stifle in this (global) meta. You'd probably be better served splitting that as some number of maindeck Therapies and other value spells. I might suggest 2 Therapy, 1 Forked Bolt, 1 Spell Pierce. It's a nice balance for an unknown metagame.
That means you open up a sideboard slot. Sideboarding is the most difficult part of this deck because it's the only real thing that changes significantly from list to list. My general guidance would be to make a sideboard that addresses the decks listed on the Decks to Beat forum here, along with Lands, and anything else you suspect will be popular in your area. Miracles is the big one here, because it's been tricky for me to find a good sideboard plan, but I think most have settled on Painful Truths as a solid answer.
This deck has a steep learning curve, so I wish you luck.
Roses are colorless.
Violets are colorless.
Everything is nothing.
Personally I'd definitely cut the Tormod's Crypt from your sideboard. You already have 4 gy-hate cards in there along the 4 drs in the mainboard. I'd also recommend getting your hands on an invasive surgery and replacing the second Surgical Extraction with it. It's as good, if not better, against Reanimator, lands and 4cloam while also having applications against Miracles and various combo decks.
Good luck!
Thanks for the comments, I've grinded a few game ones against some decks (about 5 or so each against eldrazi, mirror, miracles and lands) to try and get a better feel for the deck and knock some rust off.
Lands feels horrible. Eldrazi is probably close to 50/50 but I preferred playing bug delver against it as opposed to this version.
Also took notice of how many times stifle would be stuck in my hand or was ineffective in a certain matchup. I'm going to be swapping the stifles out for 2 cabal therapy, 1 spell pierce and 1 terminate (I've not been a fan of forked bolt for ages) and seeing how that feels.
Thanks again for the help. It feels almost like I'm starting again with this deck it's been that long.
To the "stifles are bad in certain matchups.":
Of course they are, but that's what a sideboard is for. Personally I play 4 stifle and really don't want anything else in certain matchups, especially against other Delver and Midrange, mana-heavy decks as well as against Life-from-the-Loam-decks.
I have a friend right now on BUG Delver and the problem HE has during sideboarding is that his mainboard cards are pretty decent against pretty much every deck, so the postboard-matches aren't really changing all that much since all he can bring out are cards that are mediocre anyways.
I'm actually going to try BUG for a bit to see how that feels. It definitely is slower and more grindy, but it's pretty good at what it does. The manabase is meh, and it blind flips are more rare. That being said it feels like BUG doesn't care if a blind flip doesn't happen, as it'll just grind opposing decks out anyways.
Doing this mainly because I want to have 4 Abrupt Decay main vs Chalice and Counterbalance :P I think BUG might have slightly better game vs Shardless too. Not sure how it does vs Grixis Delver. My local meta has a lot of miracles, Shardless, and a few Eldrazi.
I agree that BUG Delver is better against decks with lockpieces (including Miracles). I really think Grixis is better against Shardless though. Both YP and especially Angler are awesome against them and the additional reach in form of bolt helps a lot imo. BUG doesn't really do against them since they're just slower than Grixis, resulting in them getting grinded out more easily. But that's just my experience from playing Grixis vs. Shardless from the Grixis side and testing with a friend and his BUG Delver list vs. me playing Shardless.
I'm playing Goddick's list with Tombstalker main and Sower/Jace/submerge board. :P
Tombstalker does the same job as Angler, and flies. No bolts is kind of a bummer, but Sower/Jace have been pretty great.
EDIT: Ugh, mtggoldfish screwed up and bunched 4c delver w/ Grixis delver -_-
As a Shardless player (playing Grixis and Bug Delver before that) I can tell you that Grixis is better than BUG. I don't care about goyf and the ability to go wide with YP is crucial. Also the red removal spells are much more efficient and can burn you out before you stabilize.
Is ancient grudge a normal card to bring against miracles? It sort of kills top, but they still get a 241 from you.
How is winter orb against miracles and lands? I literally only bring in 3 cards against lands and i keep losimg to it. Are there any other matchups I bring it in? My vortex has been pretty clunky lately. I'm also on a sulfur elementail instead of a dread of night for dnt because it can also come in against miracles. But sometimes they can just plow it or keep you off 3 mana.
Joe Lossett mentioned Winter Orb being a really good card against Miracles just earlier this week in a podcast about Miracles (mtg training grounds).
To the Ancient Grudge: When you aren't having any answers to Counterbalance itself it seems pretty good to me to go fully against Top. Not only does it allow you to shuffle Top away with Ancient Grudge, you can also kill it in response to them drawing a card with it when they try to counter a 1 with it or activating a miracle.
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