Hey guys,
So I'm back on the wagon. I played Team America exclusively in 2014, doing really well (for me, at least, being not the best player ever). Last year I tried different stuff, failing every time, and after hating Jund for having no proper card selection even when I ran 3x Top I decided to reconnect with the dark side of the aggressive midrange decks. As some of you here may know, I have been on the Hymn version before, and only insanely sick stuff like Treasure Cruise ever managed to lure me away from that. So my new old list would have the same 4x Hymn to Tourach. Free wins are free, right? (or not...)
Legacy does look a tad different now. We have the Eldrazi thing, Shardless seems okayish now (not the greatest matchup) and Miracles seems to have a bad time against those Eldrazi dudes, which is nice because I don't like Miracles. Not that it's such a terrible matchup, I just don't like it. So how to tune my Hymn list? I want proper removal for Eldrazi, so at least two removal spells that hit CMC4+, I want creatures that don't die to everything, are big-ish and not graveyard dependant, since everybody seems to be hating the grave lately, and I want enough lands to cast this, while also playing one additional turn one play, sinci I tend to brick on those. So I need this:
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Tarmogoyf
2 True-Name Nemesis (graveyard undependant, reliable beater) /14
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Hymn to Tourach.
4 Abrupt Decay
1 Thoughtseize (turn one play)
1 Dismember (kills big Eldrazi)
1 Liliana of the Veil (kills big Eldrazi) /27
4 Underground Sea
2 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
3 Polluted Delta
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wasteland /20
That's 61 cards. So what do I cut? Thoughtseize is my 13th turn one play (not counting Brainstorm, which I want to hold on to for more value). I brick on those. I want one extra. The 20th land is kind of necessary when you play both BB spells like Hymn and Lily and UU spells like TNN. I really want to have at least 14 guys to make sure I have enough pressure to be able to beat controllish matchups. Lastly, I want the two big removal cards. So there's one last option: move a Force of Will to the board. But I'm playing very close to home. Expect at least a significant amount of Storm. Besides, Force is good against Eldrazi as well. Or any "hit or miss"-type of deck. I want the full set. So I decided not to decide. Someone calculated the difference between playing 60 cards vs. 61 cards, and it was so marginal that I did not want to give up the advantages I planned to tune my list to have. 61 cards it was.
Now for the board. Some stuff for combo, some stuff for Elves and D&T, some grave hate, some Miracles hosers, some extra stuff against Eldrazi, some I don't know what. Man, building a sideboard is messy. You never know what you will face in a smallish event. People own and want to play multiple decks, so basically you could face anything from SCG tier1 to old tech tier1.9 decks. It's tough. But yesterday was Modern and there were ~27% Eldrazi players who could -apart from one who sold his stuff- all play Eldrazi again. Also I never go below 2x grave hate. So I coughed up these 15. Might be wrong, but in hindsight everying seems to be, so whatever.one small consideration: I usually play 1x Surgical 1x Cage, but I expected the Eldrazi, who seem to play 5 to 6 grave hate pieces in the board, to scare people away from playing Dredge. This caused me to pick the more versatile hate (2x Surgical).
2 Envelop
2 Pithing Needle
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Disfigure
2 Marsh Casualties
1 Golagri Charm
1 Krosan Grip
1 Dismember
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Vendilion Clique /15
So here we go. Pairings are up. I play a certain fellow called Tomasz. Or Tomek, as we call him. I'm not even sure why. He drove us there. Cool guy, good player. He's on Shardless. Bad matchup, good player, and to top it off he saw a picture of my deck on Facebook. Hmm...
Round 1: Shardless. 0-2
What can I say? I'll say I made at least three errors. I boarded wrong and I made two play errors. But if I had done everyhting right I'd probably have lost anyway. But okay, admittedly, my errors made this such an uphill battle I was absolutely chanceless. I mean, I had to exile my TNN, which I wanted two copies of specifically for matchups alike this one so I would have a better chance, to be able to Force of Will his Jace. Yes, I wanted to let Jace resolve and murder it with TNN, but I didn't have enough blue mana, because he killed my lands aggressively. Okay, looks like we drive the fail train again.
Round 2: Esper Mentor control.
Inexperienced player. I was losing, if I were playing me. But I wasn't. He had me game one: Jace on the board, I had nothing for quite a long time. But then I found TNN. He had a Snapcaster. Snappy has flash, so we get to use it at end of turn. That seems like a good idea, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. For instance, your only out, which is the Toxic Deluge lying in your graveyard pile right now, is a sorcery, so you can't use it then. He Brainstormed, found horse crap and conceded. Game 2 I won because my deck was better, but okay, I shouldn't feel bad about game 1, actually I should feel even better, because game 1 I won because I was the better player. He'll catch up though.
Round 3: Eldrazi (with a touch of white)
Okay, let's face it: I have no idea what I am doing here. Never played the matchup, don't know what it usually does in Legacy. In Modern, Eldrazi Stompy is an insanely powerful deck, and in Legacy they get stuff like Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors and I know not what. Personally, I'd add Lodestone Golems, for instance, but no one did. We'll see what happens if they tune that deck properly, but we have what we have, and my round went like this. no nut draws for him. I make a guy, I kill his guys, I counter his good stuff, and generally go on to dominate the match. I never expected this matchup would feel the most comfortable, but it did. Perhaps I was lucky and he was unlucky, or perhaps we just fear the Eldrazi menace too much. I'm not sure yet.
Round 4: ANT
Sad round. I didn't know what he was on, so I kept a fine hand for almost everything, but a tad silly against fast combo: 3 lands (no fetch), deathrite, goyf, daze, lily. I drew a Ponder. Good stuff, but he can discard Lily and play around Daze. He chose the other way around. Probe and then Duress for Daze. He drew 45 lands afterwards. I wish I was kidding. yes he may have made an error Duressing Daze away, but he only neded one business spell to go off. He drew lands though. Game 2 was a battle. Which I won because Charm kills goblin tokens and Ad Nauseam from 7 is kind of risky.
Round 5: Aggro Loam
Could have, maybe even should have, lost this one. Cool deck, small mistakes by us both decided it. I blundered away game 1, game 2 I was a tad lucky, but Lily does dominate board states like a mad woman. Game 3 I ended up with an unflipped Delver and all my lands destroyed against a Scooze, Arbor and Grove. Oh my, am I in trouble here. Unless he has 2x KotR in hand and never finds a white source. Still in trouble though. Delver flips, which denies me land. Hmm. I attack for a bit, so does he. We both brick until I find a fetch for Bayou and cast Deathrite. He finds a Swamp and casts Bob. At some point I have him, but I forgot about the idea that he can counter the mana ability from DRS with Scooze. He also forgot. So I misplayed, and he misplayed as well. Which allowed my to win on one life. Lucky I guess. But don't worry, this will backfire.
I am on 4-1. Turns out my opponents are terrible and I am 9th. I cannot ID. Fuck. okay so I play.
Round 6: Shardless BUG
I lost. I tried fucking everything, but I just lost. Yes, he managed to stabilize on one life, but that's what control decks do, so I can't feel bad about that. I had my chances and when I needed a good draw I found a land or so. I happens, and in the long run Shardless just beats us. I must admint that I again I never got to use TNN. I wanted two specifically because I have issues beating this deck, but it just didn't happen for me.
So I went 4-2, losing 0-2 againt Shardless, but beating everything else. But hey, at least I got to fetch proper lands. The day before I played Modern, and fetching shock duals is just sad.
Recap:
Prop-loved my 61 card deck
Prop-Tomek playing on, only to raise my resistance score - he won everything and actually ended a spot above me in the final rankings
Prop-Belgians have excellent beer, which helps when you miss top-8 this way
Prop-Rudy for trading all my spare stuff for stuff that helps me complete three decks
Slop-two tourneys in a row is a tad taxing on my energy level
Slop-yeah, well, I'd like to have gone top-8, right? Duh... But fuck it. This sort of stuff just happens, right?
Slop-oh yeah, I forgot to mention: lost the toss 5 times. Fuck chance.
Thanks for the recap!
I wonder, is it possible to run the Hymn build with only 3 seas?
How do you feel about thing in the ice? Better than goyf?
No.Originally Posted by insnebob1889
0/4 defender in a tempo deck? Granted if you dropped it t2 with a bunch of cantrips it would be great. However, drawing it t5 when you're in top deck mode, it's a horribly dead draw.
Why don't you try 2x Tombstalker or a 1/1 split Stalker/Gurmag angler in place of the 2 Nemesis?
Granted Nemesis is better than Stalker in certain matchups (Miracles comes to mind), but Stalker is better in others (when you have to race your opponent), and running Stalker means you don't have any UU card in your 75, so you can probably play just 19 lands and feel safe. This way you also solve the "61 cards" problem.
IMHO, being able to play one less land in a Delver shell is pretty crucial: you flood less and your Delver flips more frequently.
I didn't want to say something along these lines because I don't have as much experience as others around here but I am glad that I was on the right mind set about this.
I've played this deck for a whole year. Stalker used to be my weapon of choice, but it has its disadvantages.
Goyf and Deathrite already use the grave, so Rest in Peace already is a problem. I wanted a beater that doesn't get hit by it.
Additionally, I expected more Dismembers, because people were preparing for Eldrazi Stompy. Stalker dies to that card.
TNN is great. I only cast it once, but it won me the game there. Thanks to my opponent misplaying, but still. TNN got me there.
About the 19 vs. 20 lands:
1. I think I have more problems not drawing any lands than I have flooding out. Of course both happen sometimes, but having no lands makes you mulligan more, which puts you down in cards. If we reach the late game, we are likely flooding anyway.
2. Being low on lands makes us need to cantrip for lands. Which is bad if we need to play the tempo game, because it slows us down.
3. TNN needs UU and Hymn and Lily need BB. I deel I cannot consistent get to these, plus G for Goyf, on just 19 lands.
This is why I am on 20 lands. Or 19,6 compared to a 60 card list.
Sure it is great and can win games by itself, and I too played it in the Stifle/Bob version where it is undoubtedly superior to Stalker, but maybe you should ask yourself why did you cast it only once.
It the Hymn version, I think Stalker is easier to cast. With Stalker/Gurmy in place of Nemesis, maybe you would have cast it more often and win some more games.
I've been running 3 Sea/2 Bayou/2 Trop in the Hymn build due to not owning a 4th Sea. It rarely comes up, but there are situations where I'll see a Tropical Island in my opener or off an early brainstorm and wish it was an Underground instead.
I did ask myself that. Drew it twice, had to pitch it to Force once, cast it and won the other.
I would rather play a shock land than a trop.
That trop gets REALLY annoying.
I like 1-2 True-Name Nemesis in the 75 because no one brings in -1/-1 effects vs BUG Delver.
So I have been really interested in the new Invasive Surgery and how it will affect our game. I am trying to reason out the different lines and uses for the card and the best way for me to do it is to write it out. I thought if I was going to write it out I might as well share it too.
Here is the new card for those of you who haven't seen it.
Invasive Surgery U
Counter target sorcery spell.
Delirium — If there are four or more card types amongst cards in your graveyard, search the graveyard, hand and library of that spell's owner for cards with the same name as that spell, exile those cards, then that player shuffles his or her library.
Right off the bat this card is a strictly better version of Envelop. It does the same thing for the same cost but has the added bonus of a conditional surgical extraction. This is important because this gives the card a lot more versatility.
I want to take a second and talk about how this card works. There is still some uncertainty because the release notes have yet to be posted so everything I am saying is based on the current rules. Okay? Okay, back to the card. So when you counter a sorcery with Invasive Surgery and the card resolves it checks your graveyard for 4 types of spells (Instant, Sorcery, Creature, Land, Planeswalker, Tribal, Enchantment, Artifact). The card that is being countered goes to the graveyard and then you get to search their hand graveyard and library for cards with the same name as that card. This means that you get to exile the card that is being countered as well as the rest that player is using. There is a corner case when it comes to uncounterable sorceries but I will talk about that a little latter on. Keep in mind that Delirium specifically mentions the 4 types need to be in our graveyard so attacking their graveyard with Deathrite Shaman is even more correct now (not that it ever wasn't).
I do want to take a moment and talk about the ways that can be used to counter the surgical extraction side of the card. It will generally take a few turns to turn on Delirium so we need to be aware of the different demands to get those 4 types into our graveyard. It should be fairly easy to get a land, a sorcery, and an instant into our graveyard but getting a 4th type is going to be difficult. There are going to be matchups where an Invasive Surgery will win us the game and we need to be prepared to use removal on our own creature to activate Delirium. In addition there are a lot of hate cards we need to be aware of such a Deathrite Shaman and Scavenging ooze, but any cards that affect our graveyard make Invasive Surgery much worse including our own delve cards.
Now that we have an understanding of how the card works I want to go over the matchups and the cards that we want to be playing Invasive Surgery against. I could easily have listed all of the relevant cards and talked about them but I think the matchup is a better choice because it lets us look at the them and think about how they can change based on our opponent's card selection. It also gives us a chance to revise it later if the meta changes dramatically.
Miracles:
This is the boogieman of the format right now and currently this is a deck you want to bring cheap counters for sorceries.
The 2 main cards you want to be bringing Invasive Surgery in for are Terminus and Entreat the Angels. Removing Terminus means we are going to be in great shape to play a more aggressive game but we should be aware that getting a 4th card type into our graveyard is going to be problematic. Our opponent really needs to counter a creature spell to help us along so playing cards like Clique that need to be answered with counter spells, rather than exiled or put on the bottom of our library, might be the way to go in this matchup.
It's also possible we will see Miracles play Supreme Verdict in response to Invasive Surgery becoming popular. As I mentioned above this is a great chance to talk about how uncounterable spells interact with Invasive Surgery. When you try and counter an uncounterable spell, in this case Supreme Verdict, the spell won't be countered, but you do still get the effect on the second half of the card(if you have active Delirium). The Invasive Surgery will resolve before the Supreme Verdict does so you get to search their library, hand and graveyard for all cards named Supreme Verdict, but Invasive Surgery doesn't search the stack so you are stuck with 1 resolving Supreme Verdict that will end up in their graveyard and some number of them exiled. Keep that in mind if they are playing Snapcaster Mage or Jace, VP.
Storm:
Again we are faced with a deck that has 2 card that are worth bringing Invasive Surgery in for. The two cards we want to counter are Past in Flames and Infernal Tutor. Past in Flames seems like a decent choice to counter because it makes them work twice as hard once it is exiled to win the game, but the best target is going to be Infernal Tutor. One of tools Storm uses to fight us is Cabal Therapy and when we have 2 hard counters in hand they need to deal with both before they can cast Infernal Tutor. Being able to counter an Infernal Tutor on the stack after an LED activation will usually be enough win the game, with Invasive Surgery that is doubly so because we can keep them off flashing it back with Past in Flames and make them need to draw an unreasonable amount of cards to win the game.
I know this matchup is already a good one, but if we are going to put Invasive Surgery into our board for other matchups why not bring it in for a matchup to give us a even better win percentage.
I do want to note before going to the next matchup that hitting our 4th spell type is going to be a problem in this matchup because they don't care about our creatures. It might be worth considering keeping some removal main deck for those times when you need to activate Delirium, but then again it does what we want it to do without Delirium so maybe it's not worth it.
Lands:
This is the matchup that made me want to write this. One of the big problems with American Delver is fighting through Life from the Loam and Invasive Surgery is the perfect answer for this matchup. If you don't get a quick start Lands will stall the board and take all the time they need to find a win condition and that win condition tends to use Life from the Loam or Gamble to find it. Both of these cards are prime targets and games that go long will give you a stocked graveyard to have active Delirium. One of the ways Lands has tried to fight hate for Loam is using Tranquil Thicket to draw a card and activate dredge in response to a Deathrite Shaman activation. Invasive Surgery doesn't allow them to interject between the spell being countered and the exile effect as they are on the same card and complete resolution must happen before they can cycle with Tranquil Thicket.
Shardless BUG:
Invasive Surgery can really excel in this matchup. With Invasive Surgery we can exile most relevant spells and stop them from cascading into another one later in the game. The best target is obviously Ancestral Vision and if they suspend it we have 4 turns to find an Invasive Surgery which really cripples their card advantage engine. In addition we can counter their Toxic Deluge which forces them to play a different game where they need to answer each threat rather than kill them all with 1 card. Hymn to Torach and Maelstrom pulse are also prime targets and getting rid of extra copies can be a really great option.
Something to note about this matchup is you can choose to exile any number of the card with the same name. So if there is a board state where you counter their Hymn but want their cascades to remain bad you just fail to find any other cards and keep their other hymn in their deck. It may be exceptionally rare for the situations to happen but when it does it is worth considering if you are worried about other cascade spells.
Reanimator:
In this matchup there are 2 cards worth considering, Exhume and Reanimate. Because counters are usually already brought in having extra counters is fine and there is only 1 reanimate spell we can't counter with Invasive Surgery so replacing it for Hymn to Torachs is a good option pot board.
Burn:
This matchup might be worth bringing Invasive Surgery in for. There is a we can hit Chain Lightning, Lava Spike and Rift Bolt and even if they have an Eidolon of the Great Revel we are still saving 1 damage for a card. They also tend to attack our life gain so them bolting our Deathrite Shaman means we can easily have an active Delirium and maybe get lucky and strip their hand.
Elves:
I don't have much experience with this matchup but in theory Invasive Surgery hits all of their combo enablers (Glimpse of Nature, Green Sun's Zenith and Natural Order). I know the deck is fast but we already have some great removal against them and having a replacement for Daze post board is worth considering. Keep in mind that a Deathrite Shaman can fight us on Delirium.
Delver:
I think overall we don't want to be running Invasive Surgery against delver decks. The only deck I would consider bringing it in against would be Grixis Delver because of Cabal Therapy. A Grixis opponent playing a Young Pyromancer, Gitaxian Probe followed by double therapy/therapy is a rough position to be in however being able to stop the first and flashback of therapy makes it a consideration.
Thoughts and Predictions:
I didn't talk about all of the decks but just the ones that I feel have the biggest impact. I actually think that this could be the card that pushes delver decks above the current boogiemen of the format. It does a lot of work against Miracles, and will likely warp their deck, and it makes a mediocre Lands matchup much more interactive and gives us a fighting chance.
I also believe that this card is going to be much more skill intensive then we initially think. It will require a lot of graveyard management and graveyard hate management. A Deathrite Shaman or Scavenging Ooze can really shutdown the bottom half of the card so to get the full effect you need to consider using your others spells in unexpected ways to activate Delirium if resolving a full Invasive Surgery will win you the game. Also it might be worth considering looking at other card types like tribal if a tribal spell is on the cusp of being playable just to get more bang for our buck, granted it is likely a huge stretch but we don't really know what we are going to see moving forward so it is worth noting.
I am currently running a Hymn version of American Delver and I think that activating Delirium will not be too hard in many matchups because of our abundance of sorceries. The stifle version should still run Invasive Surgery but the matchups where Delirium matters will be considerably worse.
That's everything for now. I have no doubt I missed something and any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Last edited by mtgSBJ; 03-11-2016 at 01:04 AM. Reason: Forgot a deck =-(
Good analysis, don't forget about Show and Tell!
Just took JPA's BUG Delver list into a league and went 4-1.
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Delver of Secrets
1 Gurmag Angler
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Abrupt Decay
3 Hymn to Tourach
2 Liliana of the Veil
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Toxic Deluge
4 Underground Sea
2 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Polluted Delta
1 Misty Rainforest
4 Wasteland
Sideboard:
2 Dismember
2 Spell Pierce
2 Thoughtseize
2 Golgari Charm
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Disfigure
1 Null Rod
1 Flusterstorm
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Sylvan Library
Eldrazi: 0-2
Enchantress: 2-1
Grixis Delver: 2-1
ANT: 2-0
Reanimator: 2-1
Eldrazi just drew the nuts, though I feel this is the best Delver deck vs them. Crushed combo decks because that's what BUG Delver does, felt really nice to actually be able to race Grixis Delver. Shardless, my usual deck, pretty much never gets that luxury XD.
Interesting "bug delver" list that actually dropped the delvers. The Balefuls seems like a great anti Eldrazi meta call
http://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/386466#paper
So i played a very clone 75 to goddiks list at prague-eternal and it fest great. Managed to become 7th After swiss at the grand trial (45 players?) and lost in the finals of the trial to 4c delver. Bolts Additionally to decay to win the deathrite battle and loam lock just make this a very tough matchup. On the mainevent i was at 4-1, when i lost the possible top 8 finish to ANT, due to those one out of fifty games wehre your opponent kills you on a mulligan After getting wasted and hymned to the face... Well, this happens from time to time i guess :D
The other loss i had in the main Event was to burn, which is always a tough matchup playing BUG.... Anyone interested in a more detailed Report?
Sure buddy, reports are always interesting and source of discussion.
TEAM MtG Berlin
"Dredge isn't a deck, it's public masturbation with graveyard triggers."
Sure, I would like to know. I have been there too, my story is similar to yours, one of my loss is also on camera, there you can see, what means to be "unlucky", but it was great anyway. I might add small review later.
Yep! Along with a decklist/sideboard strats. :)
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