[Deck] Grixis Tempo

[TheManWithaPlan]

I don't really like using Stifle on Stoneforge Mystic activations unless they are threatening a Jitte and equip and swing with Jitte.

I like saving Stifle for potential Baterskull living wrapon triggers.

[kabal]

What MUs do you bring Fire Covenant in? Would you bring it in against decks playing counter magic?

[CptHaddock]

What MUs do you bring Fire Covenant in? Would you bring it in against decks playing counter magic?

Elves, I really wouldn't bring it in against decks that play countermagic. Losing a massive amount of life and getting your spell countered is just too much of a blowout.

[Baum]

Elves, I really wouldn't bring it in against decks that play countermagic. Losing a massive amount of life and getting your spell countered is just too much of a blowout.

Basically this. Elves, Death & Taxes and random creature decks like Goblins. The only blue decks I bring it in against are Infect and possibly Merfolk. Against Infect your life points don't matter most of the time anyway and Merfolk doesn't run that many counters. I've seen people board it in against me in the mirror, which just seems wrong.

[kabal]

I've seen people board it in against me in the mirror, which just seems wrong.

Maybe they thought you were boarding out most of your counter magic or at least FoW?

Speaking of boarding, do you find that being on the play against the mirror you should keep in Cabal Therapy? And take it out for Baleful Stix on the draw?

[tescrin]

I don't really like using Stifle on Stoneforge Mystic activations unless they are threatening a Jitte and equip and swing with Jitte.

I like saving Stifle for potential Baterskull living wrapon triggers.

I don't think he meant Activations. I think he meant the SFM Search Trigger; which while they got a "2-for-1" off of a squire, they played a squire in Legacy. I agree on the Batterskull as you can cost them 1-2 more turns of mana just to get it back up, though I'd caution waiting that long if you have the mana, as if they get a Jitte instead, you'll be a sad panda.


Speaking of boarding, do you find that being on the play against the mirror you should keep in Cabal Therapy? And take it out for Baleful Stix on the draw?

Depends if they're playing Gurmag/Stalker or not I think. If they're just using TNNs, Pyros, etc.. Strix doesn't get very good value. But if he keeps a 5/5 off your butt.. seems fine.

Definitely keep him on the Draw to stall the Delvers though. I think on Boarding Cabal Therapy, depends on your Side and if you're running Probes and whatnot. The blowout potential of a T2 Therapy + Therapy where you get 2-3 cards is pretty nasty; and every once in a while someone keeps something like "Ponder Ponder Push Push" and getting lucky with Probe + Therapy or a good call is game.

[TheManWithaPlan]

I don't think he meant Activations. I think he meant the SFM Search Trigger; which while they got a "2-for-1" off of a squire, they played a squire in Legacy. I agree on the Batterskull as you can cost them 1-2 more turns of mana just to get it back up, though I'd caution waiting that long if you have the mana, as if they get a Jitte instead, you'll be a sad panda.


I know that he was referring to the trigger, I am just making another note.

[Ephemeron]

Thanks for all the advice! Still getting my footing with this deck after picking it up post top ban, although I used to play RUG Delver back in the day (hence my love of maindeck Stifle). The mana dorks are definitely the difference makers I think, cuz I don't remember other Stoneblade/Deathblade decks being as miserable to play against.

As for Fire Covenant, yeah it's mainly for D&T (which is everywhere in my meta) and Elves (which is gaining momentum). I'm still not completely sold on it and it's probably better off as an Electrickery but being able to kill 2 Toughness creatures is so good and there isn't really a better alternative out there.

[Hanni]

Thanks for all the advice! Still getting my footing with this deck after picking it up post top ban, although I used to play RUG Delver back in the day (hence my love of maindeck Stifle). The mana dorks are definitely the difference makers I think, cuz I don't remember other Stoneblade/Deathblade decks being as miserable to play against.

As for Fire Covenant, yeah it's mainly for D&T (which is everywhere in my meta) and Elves (which is gaining momentum). I'm still not completely sold on it and it's probably better off as an Electrickery but being able to kill 2 Toughness creatures is so good and there isn't really a better alternative out there.

The mana dorks are definitely the difference. The mana dorks allow that deck to be a bigger tempo deck, where they still fight back with Wasteland and Daze like you would see in a Delver mirror, except they accelerate out threats that are just more powerful than what you have.

The best way to fight that deck is by getting under it. Get an early Delver or two, bolt the mana dorks, Stifle fetches, Waste duals, and Daze Stoneforge Mystic. True-Name Nemesis isn't really the problem here, as you can easily race a TNN. The equipment is definitely the bigger threat; an active Batterskull or Jitte are really hard for Delver to beat.

Therefore, I'd prioritize two plans of attack. 1, kill the dorks. If you have things like Forked Bolt, etc I'd bring those in. 2, neutralize equipment. Bring in things like Therapy, Ancient Grudge, etc.

At any rate, good luck. I play "Bant Deathblade" myself, and Delver decks are one of my easier matchups.

[Stevestamopz]

Howdy all,

I spoke some weeks ago about a Grixis Delver deck I've been calling Team Australia that played with more of the 4c approach than the traditional Grixis Delver approach (Delve Threats, Stifles + True Names replacing the Pyromancer/Probe/Therapy) and have continued to refine the deck. Last night I went 4-0, 8-0 in games playing against R/B Reaniderp, NO Jund, Miracles and Death and Taxes.

My friend Sean Brown (the dude that writes the articles/i podcast with) also went 4-0 with his version of this deck (http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=15567&d=295000&f=LE) as well. His is a bit lower to the ground but on the whole not hugely different.

Team Australia
//Creature (12)
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Tombstalker
2 True-Name Nemesis

//Instant (25)
4 Brainstorm
1 Counterspell
4 Daze
2 Fatal Push
4 Force of Will
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Spell Pierce
1 Spell Snare
4 Stifle

//Sorcery (4)
4 Ponder

//Land (19)
1 Badlands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland

SB: 2 Ancient Grudge
SB: 1 Blue Elemental Blast
SB: 1 Diabolic Edict
SB: 1 Dread of Night
SB: 1 Forked Bolt
SB: 1 Grafdigger's Cage
SB: 1 Marsh Casualties
SB: 1 Pyroblast
SB: 1 Red Elemental Blast
SB: 1 Set Adrift
SB: 2 Surgical Extraction
SB: 2 Thoughtseize

I put the deck on a diet, replacing the Snapcaster Mage with another Tombstalker, and cut the clunky sideboard cards like Painful Truths and Sulfur Elemental for more efficient albeit weaker cards and it felt amazing. I really would like to be able to work with this style of Grixis more with people and I think it's positioned really well right now. It also feels tremendous to be able to Tombstalker people out of games, let me tell you.

I've won considerable more games against DnT with this deck than I've lost - a matchup I've always felt traditional Grixis Delver felt unfavoured against.

[Kylis]

I've won considerable more games against DnT with this deck than I've lost - a matchup I've always felt traditional Grixis Delver felt unfavoured against.

I have never had any problems against Death and Taxes with Grixis Delver. Could you enlighten me a bit?

[apistat_commander]

Team Australia
//Creature (12)
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Tombstalker
2 True-Name Nemesis

//Instant (25)
4 Brainstorm
1 Counterspell
4 Daze
2 Fatal Push
4 Force of Will
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Spell Pierce
1 Spell Snare
4 Stifle

//Sorcery (4)
4 Ponder

//Land (19)
1 Badlands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland

SB: 2 Ancient Grudge
SB: 1 Blue Elemental Blast
SB: 1 Diabolic Edict
SB: 1 Dread of Night
SB: 1 Forked Bolt
SB: 1 Grafdigger's Cage
SB: 1 Marsh Casualties
SB: 1 Pyroblast
SB: 1 Red Elemental Blast
SB: 1 Set Adrift
SB: 2 Surgical Extraction
SB: 2 Thoughtseize

Very similiar to the direction I was taking the deck, mostly because I liked how it played very closely to old RUG delver lists from back in the day. A few thoughts/questions:

- How is Badlands for you? The deck is still ~50% blue, so I'm curious why this isn't another Volc/USea/Trop. Plus it doesn't play very nicely with Daze.

- How does Tombstalker compare to Gurmag Angler? I've won a lot of games off the back of Angler and the single black helps with mana. I used to jam Tombstalker in BUG Delver but that deck is set up to easily achieve BB.

- Has the Fatal Push felt good? I like the idea of Fatal Push, but always appreciated the ability of burn spells to go to the dome. Though clearing out creatures with toughness >3 is a pretty useful trick.

[tescrin]

- Has the Fatal Push felt good?

- How is Badlands for you? The deck is still ~50% blue, so I'm curious why this isn't another Volc/USea/Trop. Plus it doesn't play very nicely with Daze.

- How does Tombstalker compare to Gurmag Angler? I've won a lot of games off the back of Angler and the single black helps with mana. I used to jam Tombstalker in BUG Delver but that deck is set up to easily achieve BB.


I think the Badlands is specifically there due to Stalker. I personally like stalker a lot, but I can understand that you often need a living DRS or a nice land config to get him. Gurmag is good, but the TNN is common right now. Stalker is a tried and true beater that gets over opposing Gurmags, Goyfs, Pyros, and TNN. If you are in the Mirror, flying matters a huge amount.

My experience has been I win some games due to flying, and lose the occasional game due to BB or needing an extra mana for [spell or daze or w/e.] Gurmag is fine, but I really thing that he's in a bad place right now because Dark Bant, Esper, Delvers, Stoneblades, etc.. are all cramming TNNs; and popular decks are Grixis and Dark Bant in some of the data that's come out, which both have lots of game against Gurmag (again, pyro tokens.) Personally I'd be looking for ways to make him work.

Lastly, I believe Push is there to make Stalker more usable since you'll want to fetch red as a splash for Pyro, rather than fetch it early as a means for removal. This allows him to fetch black T1, fetch USea T2 and be covered for stalker T3/T4. Jamming stalker into your list without the above considerations may well work, but he's designed his deck to be friendly to the giant Demon to steal games from the mirror and such. NOTE: This is also why badlands is there: fetch for Bolt T1, BB by T2/T3

EDIT: I should mention, i do realize that you weren't talking to me, but hey.. I like typing.

[Stevestamopz]

Tescrin's pretty much nailed it to a T, cheers mate :wink:

- Tombstalker is dope and crushes the random fair matchups like DnT, Elves, Pyromancer.Dec, even stuff like Nic Fit. Having a deck with only evasive threats is wonderful. It can also buy you a turn against Marit Lage which has come up plenty of times for me. The 2 cmc vs 1cmc of Gurmag is obviously a consideration, and Sean doesn't like the BB of Tombstalker but I don't find it to be an issue. Probably because I grew up in Legacy playing Goblins where he played Canadian :laugh:

- having six 1cmc removal spells is amazing in the fair matchups but not a huge liability in the unfair matchups because only 2 of them do nothing. Push killing stuff like Goyf/Thoughtknot Seer or random dudes with a Sword of Fire and Ice is also really nice.

- Badlands is sometimes clunky but it's never been big enough of an issue for me to want to cut it. When you curve out your mana Sea -> Volc -> Badlands, the deck feels really smooth.

I came to this style of list after moving away from BURG because I found it too clunky. With BURG, I often had the issue of having Sea, Trop and Volc in play, and needing to ponder into a removal spell. Far too often I would find Decay when I tapped Trop or Bolt when I tapped Volc. There's no real skill to that, it's just hedging bets and using statistics but Magic is full of variance. Badlands prevents you from having that issue. Really though, and as Tescrin said, casting Tombstalker is the main reason why I started playing the Badlands.

- @Kylis: A competent DnT pilot should definitely be favoured against all Delver decks except for maybe UWR. I have beaten many Delver players with a single Mom and Serra Avenger, and that's not to even mention the games where DnT does more powerful things than that.

[ironclad8690]

- @Kylis: A competent DnT pilot should definitely be favoured against all Delver decks except for maybe UWR. I have beaten many Delver players with a single Mom and Serra Avenger, and that's not to even mention the games where DnT does more powerful things than that.

Ithink it's closer to even with "stock" Grixis. There are so many opportunities for 2 for 1s against d&t.

[brenden2000]

Won the Platinum EE Qualifier at #THEBEARDEDDRAGON. Will post a tournament report when I have more time but I played vs 4C Deathblade, Edlrazi, BUG Value, BUG Delver, and 5 Grixis Delver Mirrors!!

Mainboard was
4 Delver
4 DRS
3 Young Pyro
2 Gurmag
1 Snapcaster
4 Force
4 Daze
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Brainstorm
3 Stifle
2 Spell Pierce
4 Ponder
3 Gutaxian Probe
8 U Fetch
3 Volcanic
2 Sea
1 Trop
4 Wasteland

Sideboard was
1 Fatal Push
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Forked Bolt
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Jitte
2 Flusterstorm
2 Pyroblast
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Surgical Extraction

[AdventuresWithTarmo]

Nice job! That list looks nice, and it seems you're taking more advantage of stifle via snap and a second pierce.

Also, I'm still having a lot of trouble against storm. I play the stifle version, but for some reason I just can't beat discard spells. The one angle of attack where it makes me wish I played the therapy version. Any tips?

[Baum]

Storm is just a bad matchup for Delver decks with only blue disruption. In a metagame with a lot of Storm, I'd just play the Therapy version.

[AdventuresWithTarmo]

I wonder then, would you say it's safe to say the therapy version is the best choice for GP Vegas?

[Baum]

I honestly don't know. The Therapy version is great against combo, but Stifle is better in the mirror and against those greedy Bant/Deathblade and Grixis Control decks. Personally, I prefer MD Therapy, but it's close. In the last couple of leagues I played, Stifle would have been better.

[apistat_commander]

I wonder then, would you say it's safe to say the therapy version is the best choice for GP Vegas?

In general I think that counters are better against an open meta because they work against anything. Stifle is best when it is stopping Fetches, but there are a ton of triggered and activated abilities worth countering. Cabal Therapy is good if you can name well with it or if you know what the decks you are playing run. There are a ton of similar looking decks that execute very different game plans (anything with DRS, anything that leads Island -> Ponder, anything that plays a blue fetch but doesn't crack, etc.) so your T1/2 Therapy calls might be off. That being said Therapy/Probe synergize much better with Young Pyromancer whereas counters are much more lackluster with him. It is also probably a playstyle/preference call as well, I jammed a bunch of RUG Delver back in the day so the Stifle version does more work for me as I know how to play that shell.

[chaosjace]

I have moved to 4 stifles and more counterspells, I looove Stifle-ing fetch lands, I also put a sulfuric vortex main until I can pick up another TNN, I figure a clock is a clock, and I never see burn in my meta. Also life gain prevention.

[apistat_commander]

A few quick questions from my netdecking:

Almost every deck runs 3-4 Gitaxian Probe from the lists on MTGTop8. Granted, playing online is different from paper magic but I still don't understand it. While seeing your opponent's hand is nice, it drastically cuts down on the number of extra maindeck counters you can run. Maybe I'm more aware of this due to my combo-heavy meta, but I just don't see the benefit. I tested it some online and the information was useful, it just never felt essential. I really like the 2/2 Pierce/Snare split, it feels very balanced to me. I'm also playing a Stifle list, so maybe this is just a playstyle thing?

Almost all of the lists I see online are running 14 creatures, which is something I've never particularly understood. Maybe I'm just coming from RUG Delver with a very tight group of 12 creatures, but again running up to 14 creatures requires me to cut other useful spells I'd rather have. I've found space for a 13th creature, but I can't imagine adding others. None of our creatures have shroud and outside of Gurmag Angler, they are all pretty fragile but I haven't felt like I was running out of threats. Any thoughts here?

Also regarding creatures: I'm pretty happy with the the core of 4 DRS/Delver, 2 Gurmag but beyond those 10 I'm not terribly happy with my options. Most of the lists I see run 2-4 Young Pyromancer, which I have mentioned my problems with elsewhere in the thread. Simply put, I just never get a ton of value out of him. The other option is True-Name Nemesis which is a house when you can land it, but 3 mana can be a lot for a tempo deck to muster. This is especially true in the MUs where you need TNN the most because many of those fair decks run Wasteland. Again, I'm curious to get other's thoughts on this piece, because I haven't found a combination I'm really happy with yet.

[AdventuresWithTarmo]

It sure does seem that the probe therapy pyro is the shell that has the most synergy, and stifle belongs in a different build, something more similar to Sean Brown's list (MTG goldfish) a list which eschews probe and pyro.
It just feels good to have the resilience of the pyro build, but overall I echo these sentiments.

[Ghiwo]

A few quick questions from my netdecking:

Almost every deck runs 3-4 Gitaxian Probe from the lists on MTGTop8. Granted, playing online is different from paper magic but I still don't understand it. While seeing your opponent's hand is nice, it drastically cuts down on the number of extra maindeck counters you can run. Maybe I'm more aware of this due to my combo-heavy meta, but I just don't see the benefit. I tested it some online and the information was useful, it just never felt essential. I really like the 2/2 Pierce/Snare split, it feels very balanced to me. I'm also playing a Stifle list, so maybe this is just a playstyle thing?

Almost all of the lists I see online are running 14 creatures, which is something I've never particularly understood. Maybe I'm just coming from RUG Delver with a very tight group of 12 creatures, but again running up to 14 creatures requires me to cut other useful spells I'd rather have. I've found space for a 13th creature, but I can't imagine adding others. None of our creatures have shroud and outside of Gurmag Angler, they are all pretty fragile but I haven't felt like I was running out of threats. Any thoughts here?

Also regarding creatures: I'm pretty happy with the the core of 4 DRS/Delver, 2 Gurmag but beyond those 10 I'm not terribly happy with my options. Most of the lists I see run 2-4 Young Pyromancer, which I have mentioned my problems with elsewhere in the thread. Simply put, I just never get a ton of value out of him. The other option is True-Name Nemesis which is a house when you can land it, but 3 mana can be a lot for a tempo deck to muster. This is especially true in the MUs where you need TNN the most because many of those fair decks run Wasteland. Again, I'm curious to get other's thoughts on this piece, because I haven't found a combination I'm really happy with yet.

I agree with what you say, but you also have to consider the upsides of Peezy: it allows you to run Therapies somewhere in the 75 that make the deck able to compete against combo decks. Without them you'll struggle a lot, just like other delver decks. Other than that, Peezy is a win condition that lets you evade Baleful Strix, which is a pain for delver decks. I hate TNN for its clunkyness and inefficiency and I feel Peezy is really required if we want a resilient threat.

Yes, it has the downside of forcing you to "waste" 4 slots on probes but the upsides are more relevant in my opinion

[brenden2000]

Hey all. This is Brenden McCarley. I've been playing Grixis Delver for a long time including an SCG Open Top 8 with the deck in November. I won a Platinum EE Qualifier on Saturday with the deck winning me a Time Walk and free entry + byes to EE7, as well as top 8ed the Quest For Power event on Sunday.

My list was as follows

4Delver of Secrets
4 Deahrite Shaman
3 Young Pyromancer
2 Gurmag Angler
1 Snapcaster MAge
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Gitaxian Probe
3 Stifle
2 Spell Pierce
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Polluted Delta
3 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
4 Wasteland

Sideboard was
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Forked Bolt
1 Fatal Push
1 Umexawa's Jitte
1 Ancient Grudge
2 Flusterstorm
2 Pyroblast
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Surgical Extraction

My events went as followed

Win a Walk EE Platinum

Round 1 (2-?)

I honestly don't remember what I played against but I do know that I won this round

Round 2 BUg Something (2-0)

Game 1 I stifle a fetch and bolt his Birds of Paradise and he doesn't get anything going. Unsure what he is playing as I am not familiar with a Birds of Paradise Bug Deck.

Game 2 He misses on land drops and a wasteland gets me the time I need for Delver and Deathrite to win.

Round 3 Grixis Delver (2-0)

Game 1 I win the die roll and have T1 DRS into T2 Pyromancer Bolt your DRS with Daze backup. Game ends shortly after

Game 2 I probe him and see he boarded in Surgical Extraction. PLay around it all day and end up killing him with Delvers.

Round 4 Jon Goss on Esper Deathblade (2-1)

Jon is a carmate of mine and he also top 8ed both events.

Game 1 I go wild with pyromancer and he can't answer it.

Games 2 and 3 come down to him having zealous to clean up pyromancer and also a SFM to clean up the game.

Round 5 Grixis Delver (2-1)

Game 1 I get him to 2 and can't push in the last points of damage. Vendilion Clique ends up beating me down.

Game 2 I stifle a fetch and wasteland him and he is off of lands for a bit, giving me time to recover.

Game 3 I get a jitte online and that's good enough to win.

Round 6 Eldrazi (2-1)

Game 1 I have a quick start and win the race thanks to a topdecked bolt.

Game 2 I mulligan aggresively and we play a close game but I can't attack him because I am dead on the swingback and he draws creatures to kill me.

Game 3 I have 2 Pyromancers and a wasteland. I bolt his Eldrazi Displacer and then Therapy him and that is good enough to win.

After 6 rounds of swiss I was in first place! Being able to play first in all 3 matches is great especially when you are on a stifle deck.

Top 8 Kevin "Daddy" Jones on Grixis Delver (2-0)

Games 1 and 2 I just draw extremely well and he can't do anything.

Top 4 Ryan Phraner on Grixis Delver (2-0)

Games 1 and 2 end up just being a straight race and my cantrips found bolt while his didn't.

Finals Joe Stempo on Bug Delverish Stuff (feat. Liliana the Last Hope) 2-0

Game 1 he mulligans and keeps a hand with only wasteland and he misses too many land drops.

Game 2 He gets his fetchland stifled and gets his bayou wasted.

I ended up winning the Time Walk!!

I didn't take many notes from the Quest for Power Recall but I beat D&T, Maverick, R/B Reanimator, BUg, and 2 other decks I can't remember. Lost to Jon Goss in top 8 again.

[AdventuresWithTarmo]

I agree with what you say, but you also have to consider the upsides of Peezy: it allows you to run Therapies somewhere in the 75 that make the deck able to compete against combo decks. Without them you'll struggle a lot, just like other delver decks. Other than that, Peezy is a win condition that lets you evade Baleful Strix, which is a pain for delver decks. I hate TNN for its clunkyness and inefficiency and I feel Peezy is really required if we want a resilient threat.

Yes, it has the downside of forcing you to "waste" 4 slots on probes but the upsides are more relevant in my opinion

That's a good point. Young peezy is probably the reason to play grixis delver, next to angler I suppose.

I think its hard to really find "sacred cows" for this deck, or any other, save can trips and counters. With that being said, if we expect a lot of combo it might just be better to play the classic therapy version. But play to your strengths too. Thoughtseize (when thinking of a peezy-less version) really doesn't compare, although it's slightly easier to play.

Then you must consider the mirror match, that's the biggest reason to play LewisCBRs list.

It could pretty much go either way. I just know that there's times when I do the therapy trick with peezy when facing storm, and I'm like, "I cannot lose"

Then, I un tap with a flipped delver/drs facing an un cracked fetch or something (fair mu) and I feel the same way.

you could play with therapy in the board, but your configuration is less supportive for them, 2 peezy, 3 probe and 2tnn.

Go figure.

[Djehuti]

A few quick questions from my netdecking:

Almost every deck runs 3-4 Gitaxian Probe from the lists on MTGTop8. Granted, playing online is different from paper magic but I still don't understand it. While seeing your opponent's hand is nice, it drastically cuts down on the number of extra maindeck counters you can run. Maybe I'm more aware of this due to my combo-heavy meta, but I just don't see the benefit. I tested it some online and the information was useful, it just never felt essential. I really like the 2/2 Pierce/Snare split, it feels very balanced to me. I'm also playing a Stifle list, so maybe this is just a playstyle thing?

Almost all of the lists I see online are running 14 creatures, which is something I've never particularly understood. Maybe I'm just coming from RUG Delver with a very tight group of 12 creatures, but again running up to 14 creatures requires me to cut other useful spells I'd rather have. I've found space for a 13th creature, but I can't imagine adding others. None of our creatures have shroud and outside of Gurmag Angler, they are all pretty fragile but I haven't felt like I was running out of threats. Any thoughts here?

Also regarding creatures: I'm pretty happy with the the core of 4 DRS/Delver, 2 Gurmag but beyond those 10 I'm not terribly happy with my options. Most of the lists I see run 2-4 Young Pyromancer, which I have mentioned my problems with elsewhere in the thread. Simply put, I just never get a ton of value out of him. The other option is True-Name Nemesis which is a house when you can land it, but 3 mana can be a lot for a tempo deck to muster. This is especially true in the MUs where you need TNN the most because many of those fair decks run Wasteland. Again, I'm curious to get other's thoughts on this piece, because I haven't found a combination I'm really happy with yet.


Gitaxian Probe does alot of little things for the deck:
-triggers pyromancer for free
-sorcery card type to flip delver
-fills the graveyard to fuel delve for gurmag angler
-improves the effectiveness of cabal therapy
-improves the effectiveness of wasteland since you know what colors you need to take your opponent off of
-facilitates the choice between casting threat, cantrip, or holding up mana

On the creature suite:
-Tempo decks need a clock, and sometimes one threat isn't enough. Honestly, I'd kill to be in your shoes when you say you haven't been running out of threats...
-Pyromancer gives you a way to go wide when your creatures would be outclassed and gives you value just for playing magic that sticks around even after its gone. I haven't decided if i like 2 or 3 of the card in the deck yet.
-TNN is the stickiest threat in the deck. It's been a great closer for me when the board gets clogged or my opponent answered all of my other threats. I understand your concerns of casting a 3 drop in the face of wastelands, but I have not had a problem casting the card yet, and it's been worth it almost every time. I ran the 2nd TNN in place of the 3rd pyromancer and liked it alot.
-casting multiple gurmags in a game can sometimes be a challenge, therefore I can't see running more than 2.

[Ephemeron]

A few quick questions from my netdecking:

Almost every deck runs 3-4 Gitaxian Probe from the lists on MTGTop8. Granted, playing online is different from paper magic but I still don't understand it. While seeing your opponent's hand is nice, it drastically cuts down on the number of extra maindeck counters you can run. Maybe I'm more aware of this due to my combo-heavy meta, but I just don't see the benefit. I tested it some online and the information was useful, it just never felt essential. I really like the 2/2 Pierce/Snare split, it feels very balanced to me. I'm also playing a Stifle list, so maybe this is just a playstyle thing?


Probe is kinda a weird glue that holds a lot of parts of the deck together. It's a free spell, which is great for YP. It's also a "combo" with Cabal Therapy, which is a great card with YP. Being a free spell is also good for filling up your graveyard and powering out a Gurmag Angler, it helps you fill up the yard faster than if you were playing more permission. I also think the free information is just good in a deck like Delver where you win on tempo and quickness rather than individual card quality. Having perfect info helps you figure out the particular angle you need to exploit in a game. When I was starting out playing RUG Delver years ago I played some probes just because it helped me narrow in on an angle of attack. As I got better, I dropped them because there was no other obvious synergy in RUG (other than helping you hit threshold fast I guess). But here, Probe has a ton of synergy with your other cards. It certainly wouldn't be unreasonable to not play it though, that's the beauty of grixis delver, you can really temper it to your particular style.

[IRS]

Probe is kinda a weird glue that holds a lot of parts of the deck together. It's a free spell, which is great for YP. It's also a "combo" with Cabal Therapy, which is a great card with YP. Being a free spell is also good for filling up your graveyard and powering out a Gurmag Angler, it helps you fill up the yard faster than if you were playing more permission. I also think the free information is just good in a deck like Delver where you win on tempo and quickness rather than individual card quality. Having perfect info helps you figure out the particular angle you need to exploit in a game. When I was starting out playing RUG Delver years ago I played some probes just because it helped me narrow in on an angle of attack. As I got better, I dropped them because there was no other obvious synergy in RUG (other than helping you hit threshold fast I guess). But here, Probe has a ton of synergy with your other cards. It certainly wouldn't be unreasonable to not play it though, that's the beauty of grixis delver, you can really temper it to your particular style.

Another minor (but relevant) upside is that you can pitch Probe to a revealed Chancellor of the Annex tax in order to FoW or otherwise counter Reanimator combo.

[tescrin]

I have moved to 4 stifles and more counterspells, I looove Stifle-ing fetch lands.
I think stifle is in a good spot right now. I'm running it in my brews and realized it's sort of like DRS 5-8 when it works (due to putting you a turn ahead) I try to fake like I held mana for removal and git'em.

When it doesn't work you just didn't do anything, so you should still play DRS/Delver first unless you get a good read on your opp or they started on like.. 4-5 cards.

[apistat_commander]

Agreed, I really like Stifle but I always have. It might not always be great card but it is very rarely a dead draw. Delver loves having little angles of attack to help you get there when they are a turn or two away from stabilizing. I also think that Stifle pushes the build in a different direction, which is closer to what I'm comfortable playing.

I'm still very mixed on how I feel about Probe. I have to feel like I'm missing something if literally every list that gets anywhere is running 3-4 copies. I'm assuming that I'm viewing it in the wrong way: you are making the deck more dense, so having one less Pierce/Stifle/Etc. isn't a big deal because Probe will always cycle away for info. I'll throw some in my list to try it out, as long as I don't have to cut my Stifles!

[chaosjace]

I have never had probe do me any favors, save for the card draw, and in my meta, I am always stuck with a YP in hand trying to get rid of it. Therapy has netted me a few batterskulls, but from my experience, never relevant enough otherwise. Stifle on the other hand has bought me numerous turns against a variety of decks and now that I am off YP-Probe-therapy, there is much more room to react.

[LewisCBR]

Ironclad (the owner of this thread) has asked me to help out with updating the primer, specifically the sideboard section. I sent him a write-up of about 8 popular matches, that hopefully will be posted up later today. Please keep an eye out for the yupdate and then take a look at what i whipped up and see if you like the formatting or if i'm missing something completely obvious!

Thanks!

[Ghiwo]

That's a good point. Young peezy is probably the reason to play grixis delver, next to angler I suppose.

I think its hard to really find "sacred cows" for this deck, or any other, save can trips and counters. With that being said, if we expect a lot of combo it might just be better to play the classic therapy version. But play to your strengths too. Thoughtseize (when thinking of a peezy-less version) really doesn't compare, although it's slightly easier to play.

Then you must consider the mirror match, that's the biggest reason to play LewisCBRs list.

It could pretty much go either way. I just know that there's times when I do the therapy trick with peezy when facing storm, and I'm like, "I cannot lose"

Then, I un tap with a flipped delver/drs facing an un cracked fetch or something (fair mu) and I feel the same way.

you could play with therapy in the board, but your configuration is less supportive for them, 2 peezy, 3 probe and 2tnn.

Go figure.

You can make Peezy, Stifle, Probe and Therapy live in the same deck without too many problems in my opinion. I wouldn't play Therapies main deck because, as you said, they're only great against combo decks, and you can put them in your sideboard. Maindeck I prefer to go straightforward with Stifles that are good against almost every deck and if worst comes to worst they can pitch to FoW.

I struggle to figure out why LewisCBR's list should be better in the mirror: it has 2 TNN than in my opinion is your worst creature in tempo mirrors. 3 mana for a removal-proof, infinite-chumpblocking Delver of Secrets is not where I want to be when you and your opponent are wastelanding each other every turn. Peezy is much more difficult to handle if you can't answer immediately or don't already have your own. Yes, Lewis has Pierce over the 4th Probe, which is nice in the mirror, but that's it. Without diminishing Lewis' list, obviously!! :tongue:

[LewisCBR]

I struggle to figure out why LewisCBR's list should be better in the mirror: it has 2 TNN than in my opinion is your worst creature in tempo mirrors.

I sort of believe the opposite. Yes, the mirror can sometimes turn out to be a Stifle/Wasteland fest, but not really all the time. In those cases, TNN is there to pitch to Force, which i still leave some number of Forces in post board. I just finished up a mirror match online, 3 minutes ago, where games 1 and 2 were both decided by who stuck a TNN while the rest of the board was gummed up with YP's, DRS's, and Anglers.

Side note, i just won that match because he brought in Fiery Covenant, tried to fire it off for 5 in game 3, but i countered it. Dont bring in that card against the mirror or other counter-heavy decks. You know how bad it feels to get your Dismember countered? FC getting countered feels even worse. I've actually cut that card altogether, for now, because im not seeing as much Maverick or Elves as i thought i would. And against Elves, having one main deck Forked Bolt and one side Forked Bolt has been good enough.

[Ghiwo]

I sort of believe the opposite. Yes, the mirror can sometimes turn out to be a Stifle/Wasteland fest, but not really all the time. In those cases, TNN is there to pitch to Force, which i still leave some number of Forces in post board. I just finished up a mirror match online, 3 minutes ago, where games 1 and 2 were both decided by who stuck a TNN while the rest of the board was gummed up with YP's, DRS's, and Anglers.

TNN is not been too much of a problem for me when my opponent dropped it in a mirror match. Obviously when both you and the opponent have everything it's clearly good at breaking the stall. But if I have a Peezy and you haven't then my board seems better, same if I have one more DRS than you.
Maybe I'm driven by my experience but I've always hated TNN when I played it. Some guys even board in Pyroblasts..!

[Madmankevinx]

I'm not impressed with probe lately. I'm wondering, and of course opinions here would be valued highly, but has anyone tried something like:
-4 probe
-2 therapy

+3 thoughtseize
+3 stifle

Seems like it might be a decent starting point if probe doesn't perform for someone?

[TheManWithaPlan]

Playing the Pyroless build of Stifle Grixis Delver, I am playing Probe as mostly a filler card. It has never done anything truely impressive, however it has not been a card I actively don't want in my deck. As someone mentioned earlier (can't find the post right now), Probe really allows you to use you Stifles and Wastelands more effectively which gives the card a lot of power in this deck. Really, I don't love Probe but I don't hate it, so I am quite neutral on Probe.

@Ghiwo, I strongly agree with your point that you can make Grixis Delver with Probe/Therapy and Stifle in the 75 work. In my opinion, if you are playing LewisCBR's version of Stifle Grixis Delver, it is a very good idea to play Cabal Therapy in the sideboard because of its incredible synergy with Young Pyromancer and Gitaxian Probe.

[LewisCBR]

I really like Probe and am in the camp that it is a busted Magic card. I wish i could find room in the list i like for the 4th, to be honest. To be able to plan your attack is huge for such an aggressive/mana denial deck. Getting Probed is one of the most tilting things in Legacy, lol, i just feel naked, with no surprises. I think Probe will get banned at some point.

[Quasim0ff]

Not playing gitaxian probe is probably the dumbest thing you can do [in this type of format].

Probe, and ancient tomb, are probably the two strongest cards in the format currently.

Probe does EVERYTHING you want in this deck. It's not like RUG, where you can play a well crafted game where you can just protect a mongoose and stop w/e the opponent is doing; This deck actually plays to the board, and probe lets you do that in a much smoother way than any other card that you could potentially play in it's place.

[ironclad8690]

Hey guys, updated the primer with some sideboarding notes from LewisCBR.

[Stevestamopz]

Took Team Australia to the semi-finals of the Australian Eternal Weekend. 90ish players. 5-0-2 through the swiss (double id in the last 2 rounds), lost 1-2 to ANT in the semis :frown: Will write a proper report soon.

[Plague Sliver]

Took Team Australia to the semi-finals of the Australian Eternal Weekend. 90ish players. 5-0-2 through the swiss (double id in the last 2 rounds), lost 1-2 to ANT in the semis :frown: Will write a proper report soon.

Look forward to it.

I started playing your exact maindeck list with -1 Counterspell +1 Spell Pierce. It's been an amazing engine of destruction. It also doesn't hurt that Tombstalker is my favorite card in the whole wide world not named Plague Sliver.

I grinded about 10 games vs. a capable opponent running Young Pyromancer Grixis, both pre- and post-board. Team Australia performed admirably against it. There's just too much stiflin' and evadin' goodness.

Tangent: shout out to SDEMatt for convincing me to buy an FBB Badlands for $100 so, so long ago. Glad I can finally put it to good use here, and not have to use any white-bordered cards.

---

A few observations from VERY limited tournament play and testing:
- Submerge doesn't seem incredible when Fatal Push gets 'er done for 1 CC *and* deck runs DRS acceleration. I could see myself playing Push #3 or 4 in the board instead of Submerge.
- The deck can be threat-light to the point where I usually don't keep hands without a creature. Is this a proper way to think about it?
- I personally like having a 3rd Pyroblast effect in the board. You can't let 'em land True Name, and Marsh Casualties is pretty limited in application.
- Thoughtseize in the board vs. combo. Love it. That's exactly the right place for it.


Playing the Pyroless build of Stifle Grixis Delver, I am playing Probe as mostly a filler card. It has never done anything truely impressive, however it has not been a card I actively don't want in my deck. As someone mentioned earlier (can't find the post right now), Probe really allows you to use you Stifles and Wastelands more effectively which gives the card a lot of power in this deck. Really, I don't love Probe but I don't hate it, so I am quite neutral on Probe.

- Gitaxian Probe, even without Young Pyro, is good. I'm considering making room for 2-3 in the main even without the synergistic combo.

[apistat_commander]

I struggled with two things for a while with Grixis Delver: not wanting to run 14 creatures and wanting to run Gitaxian Probe. After reading advice in this thread and doing more extensive playtesting I can say that running 14 threats and Probe is the right thing for the deck. I really, really wanted to play the deck like Canadian Threshold but it just doesn't. I wanted to take the numbers and spells I liked from that deck and jam them in here. You need the extra threats to close the game out and Probe is so good in this deck that it is worth shaving your extra copies of Stifle/Spell Pierce to fit in. The information it gives you is so incredibly useful, I can totally understand why this has become a staple in the deck. The other thing I'd point to are tournament results: go look at MTGTop8 and you'll see that every deck runs Probe and at least 14 creatures. The deck plays much more smoothly for me with those inclusions, even though I resisted them for a long time.

[Stevestamopz]

As promised, my tournament report: https://thesaltminesite.com/2017/06/14/gunna-fly-now-team-australia-top-4-at-eternal-masters/

Feedback as always, is appreciated.

[ironclad8690]

Nice report Steve. Cool to see your take on the deck!

[keys]

If you're playing double black for Tombstalker, what about Hymn (and maybe Liliana)?

[Mzfroste]

If you're playing double black for Tombstalker, what about Hymn (and maybe Liliana)?


Hymn and LotV are primarily midrange / control cards. Even though they are powerful, they are not good tempo / aggro threats, and that playstlye is what makes Grixis the deck it is.

[AdventuresWithTarmo]

Took stifle delver to a 10-5 finish at GP Vegas.
My list 3 peezy and 1 tnn, 3 stifle and my flex slots were 1 pierce and 1 forked bolt. My side was:
2 pyroblast
3 cabal therapy
1 pithing needle
1 grafdiggers cage
1 dismember
1 fire covenant (this got me a win against elves when they had a jitte with counters on it)
1 forked bolt
1 surgical extraction
1 flusterstorm
1 sulfuric vortex
1 ancient grudge
1 Dread of night

Overall, stifle did work in the delver mirrors, especially protecting against wasteland, but personally, I'm not feeling stifle. I picked this version because I felt my newness couldn't properly support the therapy version. But this deck really wants to drop the peezy on 2. Granted, the consensus is to play 2 peezy... but I felt that between wasteland and playing against and with daze, 1 tnn was enough for me. The therapy version just doesn't really have cards that argue with eachother, and therefore was very consistent.

As Quasim0ff mentioned earlier in the thread, this deck "plays to the board". The grixis advantage is peezy, and therapy runs in line with that. Unload with pyro tokens. Your lines of play in that version are also more flexible, as stifle can become dead pretty quickly.
I probably play very different (or, admittedly, just wrong) from the successful stifle players, but that's just my take on the whole thing.

Edit:

Forgot to mention one thing. I'm sold on grim lavamancer. My previous opinion, "creatures need to die in legacy, sometimes the turn they hit the board" okay, fine. But there's plenty of instants and sorceries that fulfill that role.

Many times in the GP, opponent plays a DRS on one, and the next turn drops a lavamancer. Whenever I was faced with the option of which one to remove, only having 1 removal spell, that's when I realized just how good it was in the mirror. It holds priority over DRS (barring corner cases).

[tescrin]

I think of Stifle as a reasonable Late-game card actually. Blocking the SFM trigger, the Snap-trigger, a Jace Ult, or even a Liliana-sacrifice is pretty nice. It "feels bad" because your opp got a 2-for-1, but they got the shit half of the deal. They didn't get the spell they needed from Snap and they didn't get an equip, but instead just a Squire. The more I play it, the more I find strange outs.

The other day I won a life-race in part by Stifling a DRS activation. Seems bad to essentially say "I gain 2 life.." but that's the thing, the card's versatility: hitting Terminus, hitting Fetchlands, hitting a Grim-activation, hitting the BSK trigger, stopping a Pyro trigger. Lots of times it costs you a card for "nothing"; but you were about to lose a bunch of cards or lose the game. The fact that it acts as DRS 5-8 some games, and acts as "randomly hose your opponent's most important game plan" other games has felt quite good.

I know that I sometimes would land an SFM and they'd spend a stifle and my lizard brain would say "Got the 2-for-1!!" while I was being beat up by a Delver; but it matters. I get that Therapy can hit all those equips too, and more reliably a lot of the time, but it can't stop the Batterskull if you get the Therapy on the wrong draw step, it can't stop the Snapcaster from killing your last threat, or the Terminus from sweeping your board.

As always, no problem if you just disagree, but I really feel like in the past month or two I've really come around to the card as a versatile game-saver. It feels a lot better than I would've thought to stifle the Snap trigger and leave your opponent without the removal they were planning for, or without the Ponder they needed to find card X.

[kabal]

For the folks playing Cabal Therapy in their main, do you feel that Dismember and/or Spell Pierce are still holding their weight in the flex spots?

[BeTeP]

Hey guys, updated the primer with some sideboarding notes from LewisCBR.

Hi, tnx for your work guys!
Can you also write about what to cut for SB options? What card are weak in matchups and why. It would be very helpful.

[AdventuresWithTarmo]

For the folks playing Cabal Therapy in their main, do you feel that Dismember and/or Spell Pierce are still holding their weight in the flex spots?

Hey kabal, interesting question. Hard to say, depends on what you're gunning for in game 1.

Im back and forth, but I read an article on how to beat storm, by Jonathan Alexander. It mentioned that the more ways you can interact on turn 1-2 (play and draw), the better, so that's the case for spell pierce. It's still reasonable to cut it though, noah walker is running a TNN in its place. (Go to CFB and read sigrist's article)
As for the extra removal spell, i think as a one of, anything you prefer is fine, but I personally like either the catch all dismember, or a forked bolt and putting the other in the side. Dismember also nabs prelate on 1, but forked bolt is an amazing 2 for 1 against elves.

In the bug and grixis mirror, dismember is clutch though, since the therapy version isn't attacking the opp mana as much, they're more likely to resolve goyf/angler without worry of daze, so having a live draw off of your ponder/brainstorm is sweet. Plus you can cast it off of any mana producing land, against wasteland, it seems super relevant.

I remember someone mentioning that 1-ofs are still really strong in legacy, because you play draw spells that dig down 3 cards.

Its all what you prefer though, GSY plays fire//ice, lol.

[ironclad8690]

Dismember is awesome, I might even go up to 2. It hits everything relevant except TNN, it doesn't get blown out vs prowess decks, you can play it under blood moon, and also under chalice. Since the meta is leaning a little more fair lately I think now might be a good time to play 2 again, like people were after eldrazi came out.

I just 5-0'd a league too. List is here. (https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/684223#online)

Czech Pile: 2-1
RUG Delver: 2-0
Storm: 2-0
Big Red (Mono red sneak attack): 2-1
Mirror: 2-1

[LewisCBR]

Hi, tnx for your work guys!
Can you also write about what to cut for SB options? What card are weak in matchups and why. It would be very helpful.

I wanted to purposefully keep that section vague, but still include some ideas for people to think about. I always feel like sideboards can vary and mapping your board comes down to personal preference. I like to always keep in a couple Forces, for example, but some people dont, and both can work with a proper map, plan, or play style.

I've been very forthcoming with my own sideboard map, i have posted it many places, but here it is again for you if it'll help. But really, even i deviate from my own plan if i feel like i need to. My opponent might play strangely to where i keep in Stifles or he is reckless and i keep in all the Forces, etc.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/121LJcj3wwcr99okX3p7wt3YUbWjbCjZJFzQWpxCpsYM/edit?usp=sharing

[Wendiger_Mungo]

I wanted to purposefully keep that section vague, but still include some ideas for people to think about. I always feel like sideboards can vary and mapping your board comes down to personal preference. I like to always keep in a couple Forces, for example, but some people dont, and both can work with a proper map, plan, or play style.

I've been very forthcoming with my own sideboard map, i have posted it many places, but here it is again for you if it'll help. But really, even i deviate from my own plan if i feel like i need to. My opponent might play strangely to where i keep in Stifles or he is reckless and i keep in all the Forces, etc.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/121LJcj3wwcr99okX3p7wt3YUbWjbCjZJFzQWpxCpsYM/edit?usp=sharing

thanks for all the input! keep on 5-0ing :wink:

[Stevestamopz]

After playing Canadian for a bit (and not doing very well), I went back to Team Australia and 4-0'd my local weekly Legacy.

2-0 ANT (how good is Stifle on Tendrils?)
2-0 UR Standstill
2-1 UR Delver
2-0 4C Loam.

I've noticed an uptick in mid-range g/w/x decks floating around so I've been trying new things in the sideboard.

//Creature (12)
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Tombstalker
2 True-Name Nemesis

//Instant (25)
4 Brainstorm
1 Counterspell
4 Daze
2 Fatal Push
4 Force of Will
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Spell Pierce
1 Spell Snare
4 Stifle

//Sorcery (4)
4 Ponder

//Land (19)
1 Badlands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland

SB: 2 Ancient Grudge
SB: 2 Dark Confidant
SB: 1 Fatal Push
SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 1 Grafdigger's Cage
SB: 1 Marsh Casualties
SB: 2 Pyroblast
SB: 2 Surgical Extraction
SB: 2 Thoughtseize


Note: Dark Confidant is only there for the combo matchups,though I could see it coming in against decks like the Czech Pile where your life-total isn't super relevant. I've yet to test that matchup with Bob however so take it with a pinch of salt.

[LewisCBR]

After playing Canadian for a bit (and not doing very well), I went back to Team Australia and 4-0'd my local weekly Legacy.

Note: Dark Confidant is only there for the combo matchups,though I could see it coming in against decks like the Czech Pile where your life-total isn't super relevant. I've yet to test that matchup with Bob however so take it with a pinch of salt.

Haha, i played against a guy who had Bob and Tombstalker in his deck, just the other day. Lo and behold, he took 8 on a crucial turn. Was pretty sick... for me.

[Plague Sliver]

Top 4'd a 50-man Legacy Invitational Tournament in beautiful Guangzhou, China this weekend...with "ol' reliable" a.k.a. Honda Civic a.k.a. Grixis Delver.

https://writtenbyjames.com/2017/07/04/guangzhou-legacy-invitational-report-top-4-with-grixis-delver/

Feedback most welcome.

[Nola]

Top 4'd a 50-man Legacy Invitational Tournament in beautiful Guangzhou, China this weekend...with "ol' reliable" a.k.a. Honda Civic a.k.a. Grixis Delver.

https://writtenbyjames.com/2017/07/04/guangzhou-legacy-invitational-report-top-4-with-grixis-delver/

Feedback most welcome.

Congrats for your top 4'd! Well done!

Nice report! Awesome write up!

Thanks for sharing :)

[jwl3gg]

I wanted to purposefully keep that section vague, but still include some ideas for people to think about. I always feel like sideboards can vary and mapping your board comes down to personal preference. I like to always keep in a couple Forces, for example, but some people dont, and both can work with a proper map, plan, or play style.

I've been very forthcoming with my own sideboard map, i have posted it many places, but here it is again for you if it'll help. But really, even i deviate from my own plan if i feel like i need to. My opponent might play strangely to where i keep in Stifles or he is reckless and i keep in all the Forces, etc.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/121LJcj3wwcr99okX3p7wt3YUbWjbCjZJFzQWpxCpsYM/edit?usp=sharing

I'm currently working on building Grixis Delver, and your list is perfect, and the SB guide is awesome, thanks!

[Zilong]

Top 4'd a 50-man Legacy Invitational Tournament in beautiful Guangzhou, China this weekend...with "ol' reliable" a.k.a. Honda Civic a.k.a. Grixis Delver.

https://writtenbyjames.com/2017/07/04/guangzhou-legacy-invitational-report-top-4-with-grixis-delver/

Feedback most welcome.

Here too, nice report James, thx for showing some chinese legacy news to other delver players here in the world ^^

[mindcrank]

1 Spell Pierce
1 Spell Snare



So, I really like your list a TON. I am a huge fan of TNN as well as Tombstalker > Gurmag in a lot of match-ups. I am having a hard time with Spell Snare viability in my meta and was curious what makes you use it in yours? :)

[theMonster]

Hey, y'all, kind of an odd question, but I'm playing a Team Unified tournament tomorrow and am the blue mage of my team. My partners are on BR Reanimator and either DnT with Chalices or straight-up EnT. I anticipate lots of Belcher, some DnT, some Burn, opposing Delver decks, and then lord knows. Which build of Delver would you sleeve up for a tournament like this? My first instinct is "Grixis Canadian"/"Team Australia" because I'd have less air and more business in my deck. But if I were to go with Team Australia, I can't play the Badlands because my BR teammate needs it (though I could run four Seas and only two Volcanics because only one deck per team will have access to Wasteland). I also can't play Thoughtseize for the same reason. Should I play traditional Grixis instead and run Therapies maindeck instead of Stifle? And regarding the creature suite, I was considering playing a maindeck Clique with two TNNs in the sideboard, anticipating slightly more combo than fair/grindy stuff.

Team Unified is a new frontier for me, so I'm grasping at straws a bit.

Thanks a lot!

[TheManWithaPlan]

Hey, y'all, kind of an odd question, but I'm playing a Team Unified tournament tomorrow and am the blue mage of my team. My partners are on BR Reanimator and either DnT with Chalices or straight-up EnT. I anticipate lots of Belcher, some DnT, some Burn, opposing Delver decks, and then lord knows. Which build of Delver would you sleeve up for a tournament like this? My first instinct is "Grixis Canadian"/"Team Australia" because I'd have less air and more business in my deck. But if I were to go with Team Australia, I can't play the Badlands because my BR teammate needs it (though I could run four Seas and only two Volcanics because only one deck per team will have access to Wasteland). I also can't play Thoughtseize for the same reason. Should I play traditional Grixis instead and run Therapies maindeck instead of Stifle? And regarding the creature suite, I was considering playing a maindeck Clique with two TNNs in the sideboard, anticipating slightly more combo than fair/grindy stuff.

Team Unified is a new frontier for me, so I'm grasping at straws a bit.

Thanks a lot!

If you are expecting lots of Burn, Belcher and DnT, you don't want Stife. Stifle is great against Belcher, but against burn and DnT, Stifle is pretty hit or miss. This also brings me to a point I have been wanting to mention lately. I feel like since the banning of Sensei's Top, the format transitioned from being Leovold.Format (exaggerating) to more combo and aggro decks. Stifle was a meta call to prey upon the greedy manabases of all the Leovold decks, and now that those decks aren't as prevalent, I think it is time to start moving back to the Therapy build.

Good luck in the event tomorrow!

[Jo11ygrnreefer]

Hey, y'all, kind of an odd question, but I'm playing a Team Unified tournament tomorrow and am the blue mage of my team. My partners are on BR Reanimator and either DnT with Chalices or straight-up EnT. I anticipate lots of Belcher, some DnT, some Burn, opposing Delver decks, and then lord knows. Which build of Delver would you sleeve up for a tournament like this? My first instinct is "Grixis Canadian"/"Team Australia" because I'd have less air and more business in my deck. But if I were to go with Team Australia, I can't play the Badlands because my BR teammate needs it (though I could run four Seas and only two Volcanics because only one deck per team will have access to Wasteland). I also can't play Thoughtseize for the same reason. Should I play traditional Grixis instead and run Therapies maindeck instead of Stifle? And regarding the creature suite, I was considering playing a maindeck Clique with two TNNs in the sideboard, anticipating slightly more combo than fair/grindy stuff.

Team Unified is a new frontier for me, so I'm grasping at straws a bit.

Thanks a lot!

In that format with that meta, I would stay away from using a tempo deck. I would go with a BUG Delver control build, heavy on the hand disruption. You would be better positioned for whatever you face.

Edit: If I understand the rules correctly, its 2 vs 2? If thats the case, I think it would be pretty fun for partners to play Eldrazi/Stompy & B/U FAE Control. That has a good chance of being the tourney winner.

But, what ever you choose, I would stick with two colors for better consistency.

[theMonster]

In that format with that meta, I would stay away from using a tempo deck. I would go with a BUG Delver control build, heavy on the hand disruption. You would be better positioned for whatever you face.

Edit: If I understand the rules correctly, its 2 vs 2? If thats the case, I think it would be pretty fun for partners to play Eldrazi/Stompy & B/U FAE Control. That has a good chance of being the tourney winner.

But, what ever you choose, I would stick with two colors for better consistency.

It's three-player teams, and no players can share cards besides basic lands. So there's only going to be one Force of Will/Brainstorm deck per team, for example. BUG Control, interesting. Hymn is probably pretty good in this assumed meta, now that I think about it. But control > tempo, even with all this combo? Interesting.

Thanks for the input, y'all!

(And I don't wanna steer the thread off course, so if people think there are Grixis Delver builds that would work in this tournament, I'm all ears about reading it here. Otherwise I'll take my question to a different thread.)

[Stevestamopz]

So, I really like your list a TON. I am a huge fan of TNN as well as Tombstalker > Gurmag in a lot of match-ups. I am having a hard time with Spell Snare viability in my meta and was curious what makes you use it in yours? :)

Thanks mindcrank! :laugh::laugh:

Spell Snare I've found to be insane as a hard-counter against Death and Taxes/all fair decks really, Chalice decks, Reanimator/Storm. When you draw it against Sneak and Show it makes you question your life-choice to play a conditional hard-counter but other than that, the card is nuts and has a heap of power IMO. What specifically does your meta look like I guess?

For those wanting to see the deck in action, here are some videos of me playing it at the Aus Eternal Weekend some weeks ago!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9ezIohC57w&list=PLhIMc60Gwu04bZ_L7GkVW6qHAsNcrjLVc&index=4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEt8DGP64jQ&list=PLhIMc60Gwu04bZ_L7GkVW6qHAsNcrjLVc&index=9

The rest of the coverage is great too, make sure to check it out!

[nGoldenX]

Hey everybody, I finally got mostly finished with the deck I've wanted to play forever: Grixis delver. I've been on forums with different usernames since the release of young pyromancer, helping develop grixis tempo strategies even though I hadn't been able to play with it at the time. Anyways, I got to go to my first Legacy monday event with the deck yesterday and I did pretty well (4-0, dropping two games). I know it's not a big event, but there were about 30-40 people there and our meta is pretty competitive. I also just sort of wanted to do a write up.

Here's my list:

Creatures
4x Delver of Secrets
4x Deathrite Shaman
3x Young Pyromancer
2x Gurmag Angler

Noncreature Spells:
4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
4x Gitaxian Probe
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Daze
3x Stifle
3x Force of Will
2x Spell Pierce
1x Forked Bolt
1x Dismember

Lands
4x Wasteland
4x Flooded Strand
4x Bloodstained Mire
2x Volcanic Island
2x Underground Sea
1x Island

Sideboard
3x Red Blast
3x Cabal Therapy
1x Blue Blast
1x Hydroblast
1x Baleful Strix
1x Nihil Spellbomb
1x Rakdos Charm
1x Smash to Smithereens
1x Umezawa's Jitte
1x Pithing Needle

Round 1 vs. BRw Reanimator (2-0)

Game one he takes the play. I played against him two weeks ago when I was on Maverick, which may have influenced his decision to play this hand; it's a brutal t1 lotus petal, chrome mox, thoughtseize himself, attempt to reanimate griselbrand for which I have a force. I probe him on my turn revealing tidespout tyrant. Delver+double bolt seals the deal.
Game two I board in Rakdos Charm, Nihil Spellbomb, Baleful Strix for some bolts and dismember. This game he reveals double chancellor before passing the turn without making a land drop. Luckily I have two probes, and I see a hand of 2x dark rit, exhume, 2x chancellor, and 1x wear//tear. I manage to land DRS turn one and have daze+rakdos charm. I'm sort of stuck on lands so I do a lot of passing with DRS up, eventually putting him to 6 life with it before finding a land to cast a Gurmag Angler, which gets a scoop.

Round 2 vs. NO BUG (2-1)

Game one I probe to see a hand of force, daze, misty, verdant, and dryad arbor. I don't really find anything but bolts, and he gets to dryad arbor+3 other lands without doing anything else. At this point, I actually think that he's on natural order, but I stupidly didn't bolt his dryad arbor. He drew natural order and had force to back it up. I had a delver which could have raced the progenitus using the bolts in hand, but it didn't flip when I needed it to.
Board in some cabal therapies and red blasts, taking out some dazes and stifles.
Game two I see a lot more stuff. I have an early flipped delver and bolt a deathrite and a noble hierarch before probing to see a true-name nemesis and a land while we're both topdecking. Somewhere in here I dismember a hooting mandrills. He ends up going to 1 off of a fetch while I have my delver in play, gains 2 with a deathrite, and attempts to toxic deluge for 2. I have daze for it.
Game three I bolt his t1 deathrite and then wasteland him. Eventually I get pyromancer+therapy online and he hasn't done much, so I get to strip a toxic deluge and a monkey before getting my pyro pushed. I ponder into angler, delver, and deathrite, which gives me a three turn clock that he has no way of dealing with.

Round 3 vs. Sneak and Show (2-0)

Game one I have t1 delver and probe to see his 2x show, 1x force, 1x ponder, lotus petal, and some lands. He doesn't do much, and I have wasteland for his second land. I'm holding force and daze the whole game and delver gets there.
Board in some REBs and therapies, taking out some bolts and dismember.
Game two I have probe t1 to see flusterstorm, show, brainstorm, and lands. I therapy and he brainstorms in response. I call flusterstorm, which he kept in hand and loses. At this point his hand is pretty miserable and I land a t2 delver that gets in for a bunch before I get a DRS and red blast a brainstorm that he tried to get back in the game with. He's at 10 when I EOT DRS+bolt and then hit him with the delver and activate DRS again. His hand was full of lands and I still had brainstorm, force, and daze.

Round 4 vs. Spicy ANT(1 entomb, 1 griselbrand, 1 shallow grave) (2-0, Feature match)

I saw him playing in round three and know what he's on. I still keep a pretty bad hand g1. It had had deathrite and angler, but no dig other than a brainstorm that got stripped anyways. He tendrils me out through PiF a turn after I resolve angler.
Board in therapies, spellbomb, and red blast for bolts and dismember.
Game two I leave only one land untapped when I already have stuff going to cast a pyromancer. He makes ten goblins because I brainstormed into stifle without mana to cast it. Here he messes up, not using a goblin to therapy my pyromancer; but it wasn't necessarily a safe call anyway because I had resolved brainstorm. On my turn, I flip two delvers with another brainstorm and then have pyro holding up stifle and daze. This allows me to race the goblins.
Game three is much more brutal. I have a great hand with therapy, spellbomb, and threats. I shuffle wasteland, deathrite, island with ponder t1 and he plays out two LEDs and doesn't play a second land. So of course I therapy for Infernal Tutor, which hits. I play spellbomb and then have pyro+another therapy the next turn to completely shred his hand and still leave up spellbomb, which is especially good because I took tendrils. Then I draw wasteland to destroy his only land, and beat him down with a bunch of stuff in hand and a spellbomb up.


All in all, the singleton island, lack of a green source, and missing the fourth Force didn't really present much of a problem. I'll obviously be picking them up as soon as I can. Also which should I pick up first? Force #4, trop, or volc #3?

[eldub]

Force 4

[apistat_commander]

I was hoping to get some feedback on Cabal Therapy in the side for a Stifle list. To be honest, I've never been all that great at blind-naming with Therapy. My main experience with Therapy comes from playing Storm where the cards you want to hit are easy and obvious (Thalia, Force, Chalice, etc.) and if you don't hit them, everything is alright because you can just combo out. I understand the power of Therapy with YP/Probe, the fact that it can nab multiple cards, and the value of the Flashback cost. However, since I kind of suck at soul-reading my opponents, I've been considering Thoughtseize in the side in its place. My concern is going up against decks that have redundant combo pieces (Sneak/Show, BR Reanimator, Storm) where I name Sneak Attack but they are holding Show and Tell, or Reanimate when they have Exhume.

How often do you find yourself blind-naming with Therapy? Further, when you whiff on Therapy how does this impact the game moving forward? Is this just a case of play more/get better?

[TheManWithaPlan]

I was hoping to get some feedback on Cabal Therapy in the side for a Stifle list. To be honest, I've never been all that great at blind-naming with Therapy. My main experience with Therapy comes from playing Storm where the cards you want to hit are easy and obvious (Thalia, Force, Chalice, etc.) and if you don't hit them, everything is alright because you can just combo out. I understand the power of Therapy with YP/Probe, the fact that it can nab multiple cards, and the value of the Flashback cost. However, since I kind of suck at soul-reading my opponents, I've been considering Thoughtseize in the side in its place. My concern is going up against decks that have redundant combo pieces (Sneak/Show, BR Reanimator, Storm) where I name Sneak Attack but they are holding Show and Tell, or Reanimate when they have Exhume.

How often do you find yourself blind-naming with Therapy? Further, when you whiff on Therapy how does this impact the game moving forward? Is this just a case of play more/get better?
How many Pyromancers are you playing? If you are playing 3, you probably want some number of Therapies in your sideboard, but I am not so sure about running Therapies in the side with only 2 Pyromancers.

Casting Cabal Therapy blind isn't always about Soul Reading your opponent. When naming with Therapy you generally want to make the fairest name possible, especially in combo matchups where card advantage is not really a thing. There are 2 main routes you can take to make this decision. You can either; name what you are most afraid of, or, you can take into account what cards they have played during the game, how they have played, body language (in real life) etc.

Casting Cabal Therapy has an art to it, and you really have to get in a lot of reps to be able to blind name effectively. Playing Cabal Therapy in Grixis Delver also has more learning associated with it. You have to be able to evaluate how effective your own threats are, and understand when 1 is worth sacrificing to flashback Cabal Therapy.

[Agrippa91]

Hey guys!

I've tried Team Australia these past few weeks. I liked the no-Pyromancer take since it took away that tempo-negative aspect and the clogging up the ground without really applying pressure.

I must say though that I was not impressed with a few cards:

Tombstalker basically costs twice as much as Angler, having to have 2 black sources can be just really hard sometimes, especially when you're behind and have to stabilize. With so many more ways, especially in the SB, to sweep away creatures and TNNs I'm back on Angler.

Counterspell has been very bad for me in general. It is nice in the lategame, don't get me wrong, but whenever I draw it in these crucial opening turns I seriously question the reason to have this spell over something like a Spell Pierce. I switched it for a 1-of Probe and was more pleased though I'm not a big fan of Probe. Mainly because unlike other cantrips the random card you draw worsens your hand instead of improving it like BS or Ponder. This is especially bad in multiples in opening hands. It's also an awkward top-deck when you're low on life.

Badlands seemed bad (hehe). I've tried it out instead of the 3rd Volcanic in the Pyromancer version before but didn't really like it and here it has similar reasons:
You just play sooo much blue stuff, really only a handful of spells are actually another color. I'd argue that in the original Team Australia list the Badlands should be an additional Usea given the distribution of spells. I mean you play 8-ish black symbols and 4 black sources, 4 red symbols and 3 red sources, but 24 blue symbols (not counting daze and fow) and only 6 blue sources?
Despite the additional land I just had the feeling I got mana-screwed more compared to traditional Grixis: the BB from Tombstalker while wanting UU and R at the same time were just too much when you didn't have DRS out.

What I liked:

Having Usea instead of Volcanic as your go-to land with DRS in the deck just feels sooo much better! You don't have to be afraid with your black sources so much anymore, Usea lets you cast all your threats. And of course you get the small benefit of tricking people into playing into your counters because you look like ANT when you haven't played your first creature :tongue:

The 2 TNN were really great. I know that LewisCBR has been on it for quite some time now, too and I really liked it. Finally got around buying the second on MtGO and I don't regret it. Having 4 really tough-to-deal creatures complementing the 8 1-drops gives you a really solid threat base.

Spell Snare is a card I started playing again when Miracles was a big thing and I love playing with it again. Sure it's bad against S&T, but that matchup is pretty good in general. Against all the other decks it catches this nice point in the curve where you can't always Daze them, but unlike cmc1 spells the things can already be game-changing.

Overall I still liked the RUG-Delver-esque playstyle of Team Australia, so I tweaked it a bit more to my liking:
I put in more soft counters, now completely cutting Probe. I like having more to do with open mana with Pierce and Snare, otherwise the mana often times just gets wasted when they don't fetch or play a Planeswalker. Besides, running 30 spells to flip delver like back in the day feels awesome :wink:

I cut the more clunky cards besides TNN and went down to 18 lands again, but I think without BB preboard my mana base is pretty solid now (1 colored source for every 2 symbols). I don't think more than 12 creatures is actually necessary when you have 4 "tough" ones, I have yet to encounter a deck that has me running out of threats. I've toyed around with F-Bolt over Push and liked it well enough with Tombstalker since I didn't really have to remove big threats to push through, but now with Angler I think I like Push better again. It's also instant which is nice and fits the mana because I don't have to rely on red that heavily.

Creatures (12):
4 Delver
4 Deathrite
2 Angler
2 TNN

Spells (30):
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Stifle
2 Spell Pierce
2 Spell Snare
4 Bolt
2 Push

Lands (18):
3 Underground
2 Volcanic
1 Tropical
4 Delta
4 Tarn
4 Wasteland

Sideboard (15):
1 Needle
2 Surgical
2 Thoughtseize
1 Diabolic Edict
2 Marsh Casualties
1 Hydroblast
2 Invasive Surgery
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
2 Ancient Grudge

The Marsh Casualties in the Sb are a bit harsh with only 3 black sources and DRS, but I found it ok: Especially against Storm and Elves it's really good because they don't play Wasteland. Against D&T and Grixis it can be tough, but it's just a really good effect that you just don't get otherwise. Would I play effects like Fire Covenant instead I wouldn't want it against those decks anyways. I considered Profit/Loss but 3 mana is just way too expensive imo considering you want it against a t1 empty, t3 elfball-kill, thalia and daze/flusterstorm.

The reason I don't play flusterstorm btw is because in matchups I'd want it I already have enough cards to bring in. It's pretty much even against combo, but Invasive Surgery really helps against Elves and these grindy decks that are tuned to beat delver via Loam, Hymn, deluge, Pox what-have-you.

I'd be interested into playing Grixis matchup, anybody willing to play on MtGO this (European) night? I'll be online in about 4h.

[apistat_commander]

So Agrippa's version of the deck is approximately where I imagined taking it, which is closer to the old Canadian Threshold shells. I like the list because it reminds me of a deck that I enjoyed playing and was successful with, however what I'm wondering is if it really is better than the standard list. If you look at tournament results almost every single sucessful Grixis list has two items in common: 14 threats and Gitaxian Probe. Now you could just ascribe all of that to people netdecking and not thinking for themselves, but I have to think that the sheer consistency of those two factors points to something important about constructing the deck.

I'm torn here because I like the look/numbers of a list running 12 creatures and more countermagic, it seems right to me, but tournament results overwhelmingly indicate that 14 creatures/G Probe is the most powerful version of the deck.

[Agrippa91]

I remember Noah Walker winning several events with Grixis Therapy and everybody telling me how Stifle is "antisynergistic" with Young Pyromancer.
I still played it because I thought it was really good against Miracles and because I felt more comfortable playing with Stifle.

Now that LewisCBR (who btw. plays 2 leagues a day as he revealed in a recent interview) is putting up constant results with 3 Stifles nobody would think of calling his list bad. Instead people try to tell me how the fourth stifle is suboptimal because it's so bad later in the game yada yada.

I just think there's a lot more net decking going on in Legacy than people like to admit, especially with Grixis Delver since it is such a good entry door to the format.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy: People say "X Delver is better than Y Delver, look at the results!". And indeed, X Delver puts up better results because everybody plays it. The few Y Delver players put up less results and people say "look at Y Delver, it barely has any results, it's bad!".

Now this is of course all theorycrafting, what I'm certain of though is the following:
I might not put up results as good as LewisCBR with his list. But I will put up better results with this Delver list that has cards I'm comfortable and know how to play with optimally than with a list I'm just playing "because that one dude who's really good at it plays it".

Slightly off-topic, but look at Andrea Mengucci's latest video he recorded with Mentor Miracles: Now I know he's not the best player, but he's at least decent and knows Miracles well. The list is from GP Lille winner Claudio Banani, you can't just brush it off as "bad". But the list was just completely not Andrea's style and he dropped after 0-3, having only won a single game!

Do I have to say more?

[apistat_commander]

I remember Noah Walker winning several events with Grixis Therapy and everybody telling me how Stifle is "antisynergistic" with Young Pyromancer.
I still played it because I thought it was really good against Miracles and because I felt more comfortable playing with Stifle.

Now that LewisCBR (who btw. plays 2 leagues a day as he revealed in a recent interview) is putting up constant results with 3 Stifles nobody would think of calling his list bad. Instead people try to tell me how the fourth stifle is suboptimal because it's so bad later in the game yada yada.

I just think there's a lot more net decking going on in Legacy than people like to admit, especially with Grixis Delver since it is such a good entry door to the format.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy: People say "X Delver is better than Y Delver, look at the results!". And indeed, X Delver puts up better results because everybody plays it. The few Y Delver players put up less results and people say "look at Y Delver, it barely has any results, it's bad!".

Now this is of course all theorycrafting, what I'm certain of though is the following:
I might not put up results as good as LewisCBR with his list. But I will put up better results with this Delver list that has cards I'm comfortable and know how to play with optimally than with a list I'm just playing "because that one dude who's really good at it plays it".

Slightly off-topic, but look at Andrea Mengucci's latest video he recorded with Mentor Miracles: Now I know he's not the best player, but he's at least decent and knows Miracles well. The list is from GP Lille winner Claudio Banani, you can't just brush it off as "bad". But the list was just completely not Andrea's style and he dropped after 0-3, having only won a single game!

Do I have to say more?

I was trying to spur some additional discussion, not just shut it down by pointing to tournament results. I completely agree on the netdecking piece and playing what you are comfortable with. However, I don't think you can simply dismiss a pile of tournament results as "All of those people netdeck." Again, the sheer consistency of those two factors gave me pause. I'm mainly playing devil's advocate to try and tease out more discussion; I actually I agree with you: I've never liked Probe, Young Pyromancer was never amazing for me and I prefer to run additional countermagic. However, that is going directly in the face of tournament results which points to something important about those cards/that strategy that I must be missing. I'll try to dive a little deeper into each issue below, but again the idea is to examine what is it about the things that produces winning decks, because it is easy to use confirmation bias to find something to be "bad."

Gitaxian Probe - The main factor I wonder about here is if this card excels more in the online environment/big tournaments. For small local weeklies, you are much more likely to know what people are playing. Having a clear idea of what your opponent is doing early in the game is very important for utilizing your spells well. For example U Sea into DRS could be a wide range of decks, so Probe clears up the confusion here. If you know what your opponent is on, the information from Probe is still useful but not quite as vital. Probe never felt bad for me in testing but it also never felt amazing. I've always felt like I'm missing something here, but I can't quite put my finger on it. I brought up this issue a few pages back and the explanations people gave are helpful, but never matched up with how it felt to me when playing the deck.

Creature count - I think this varies a lot with the meta that you are playing in. My local meta is super combo heavy, so running out of threats is less of an issue for me. I do think there is some validity to running a diverse suite of threats. I see the core as 4 DRS/4 Delver/2 Gurmag Angler with the other slots being more flexible. Running up to 14 creatures allows you to fit in a healthy number of Young Pyromancer and True-Name Nemesis, both of which provide the deck unique angles of attack. My first iteration of Grixis Delver was essentially what you are playing and I never felt like I was threat-light, whereas other folks in this thread expressed amazement at that. This may simply be a result of my more limited testing with the deck, compared to grinders like LewisCBR that are playing 10-15 matches a day with the deck.

[Agrippa91]

No bad feelings :wink:
I feel like Spell Pierce and Spell Snare can be counted at least somewhat as "creatures" in the "fair" matchups. Whether you counter an actual removal spell, snapcaster mage, hymn or kolaghan's command, on your next turn you still have a creature which is what counts. Sure the comparison is somewhat lackluster, but simply stating "you need 14 creatures so you don't run out of threats" is just plain wrong imo.
Something I find especially nice about Pierce and Snare is that they counter a lot of stuff that would be able to deal with Angler and TNN since those cards outside of STP are costing 2+ mana.

[Cythare]

So, after a long time away from the deck, I've recently returned to Grixis Delver, and am curious about thoughts on my list. I run Cabal Therapies main, since I've had plenty of practice with it and feel I'm pretty good at the soulread. That said, the maindeck is fairly standard, but I do run some different SB choices. My meta is currently a pretty hodgepodge mix of decks, with no single deck really having more than a few copies out of the 16-32 people that may show up on a given day (with a slight lean towards Lands).

Creature (14)
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Gurmag Angler
1 True-Name Nemesis
3 Young Pyromancer

Spells (28)
4 Brainstorm
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Daze
1 Fatal Push
4 Force of Will
3 Gitaxian Probe
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Ponder
1 Spell Pierce

Lands (18)
2 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland

Sideboard:
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Diabolic Edict
2 Divert
1 Dread of Night
1 Fatal Push
1 Flusterstorm
1 Kolaghan's Command
1 Null Rod
2 Pyroblast
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Winter Orb

Winter Orb is sometimes Umezawa's Jitte depending on what I think I'll see.

[Agrippa91]

Sooo... why are you writing this? Your list seems pretty standard, do you have any report on how the deck plays out in your metagame? Questions or opinions on specific cards?

A questions that comes to mind when I look at your sideboard is the 2 diverts. I know that this card was insane against Shardless and very good against burn and discard-heavy decks like Pox, but not against much else. Specifically against Shardless though I already had enough cards in my sideboard and the matchup was favorable enough that I didn't need direct hate. This led to me finally cutting the diverts.

What matchups do you bring in that card? Since it's fairly easy to play around personally I didn't like it vs. Grixis because people play too many Probes to be surprised by it.

[wcm8]

Cythare, you are playing almost the same main 60 as me, except that instead of Spell Pierce, I'm running a copy of Kolaghan's Command. I also cut the 2nd Angler in favor of a 2nd TNN -- for me it's been helpful against DNT and the various midrange decks I tend to see. Instead of Spell Pierce, I would suggest running KCommand or a Counterspell.

Your sideboard is okay, but I agree with Agrippa91 saying Divert is less useful nowadays. I would consider cutting that for maybe 2x Baleful Strix.

Some other cards to consider in the SB:
Pithing Needle
Darkblast
Hydroblast (actually quite relevant)
Sudden Demise // Toxic Deluge // Fire Covenant

[Stevestamopz]

Agrippa - I tried your list on MODO last night and spent the evening enjoying having my Gurmag Angler brickwalled by everything, but mostly True-Name Nemesis. 18 lands left me feeling a bit short on mana too.

I think your issue with Tombstalker is due to you trying to power it out too quickly - which is much easier to do with Gurmag. Aside from maybe one match (where my opponent topdecked gas 5 turns in a row) there was no match where Gurmag was better than Tombstalker but it was always worse than Tombstalker.

My buddy Sean has been working on a similar sort of list to you but it's embracing the full-lean with 3 Gurmags over the 2-2 split and cheaper spells like Submerge and Forked Bolt in the sb. Thoughts?

Creatures: (12)
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Deathrite Shaman
3 Gurmag Angler
1 True-Name Nemesis

Non-Creature Spells: (30)
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Stifle
2 Spell Pierce
2 Spell Snare
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Dismember
1 Fatal Push

Lands: (18)
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
3 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
4 Wasteland

Sideboard: (15)
2 Submerge
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Thoughtseize
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Forked Bolt
2 Pyroblast
1 Flusterstorm
1 True-Name Nemesis
1 Winter Orb

[Agrippa91]

@Stevestamopz: Thanks for trying out my list. I would be curious as to how the Marsh Casualties/Diabolic Edict turned out. In my experience one of the strengths of the heavier black commitment are those cards. Without 3 answers to TNN postboard (+2 Pyroblast) I'd propably go Tombstalker, too. As it is though I think I prefer the Anglers.

It could be that I just want my delve creatures too early. But with 18 lands I really don't want to be stuck with too many uncastable creatures in my hand which happened more often than I liked when I played 2 Tombstalkers and 2 TNN. It's true that TNN is rather expensive, but it's really just there to push through these last few points of damage most of the time.

Again, I think this might just depend on the personal playstyle. I think I'll stick with 2 Anglers for now.

About Sean's list:

My first thought is: Does he really need 3 Volcanics, but only 2 Underground Seas? He only has 4 red spells in the mainboard, but 7 black spells (I like to count 4 DRS as 3 black and 1 green since that's kinda the percentage of how often I use these abilities). Sometimes people also seem to miss that with DRS out you can cast whatever color you like anyways, but you can only activate DRS if you also have black, otherwise it's just a bird.
I'd thus change the mana a bit and switch out a Volcanic for an Underground Sea.

I can't say much about the 3 Anglers, I feel that's something you can't theorize about but have to try out and see for yourself.
The biggest problem I have with the Anglers is the sideboard: With Sean's list there's no way to remove an opposing TNN once it hits the board. That's seems like a big flaw when you rely so heavily on 3 Anglers as your lategame.
I can understand that he's not a fan of the 2 Marsh Casualties though the 3rd Underground might change his mind. But if you don't play those I'd highly suggest 2 Edicts instead of the Submerges.
What specific matchups are the Submerges for actually? Personally I almost never have cards against BUG colors because I already have enough to board in against them anyways pyroblasts, removal, evtl. flusterstorm, otherwise the maindeck seems fine). They're suboptimal against 4c control I think, especially when those decks have ETB creatures, Leovold and barely green. Are they against Elves? In that case I'd suggest Invasive Surgery which does a lot more against them imo.
Good lands players on the other hand will play around Submerge whenever they can by wasting it or crop-rotating it away before they go off.

Now I'm a big fan not only of your show but also of sideboard maps. I'd be interested in sideboarding plans against all the decks you bring in the Submerges. Btw are you playing on MtGO or in a local meta?

[Kyuuri117]

Hi all. I'm not sure if this is the right deck thread, but I've recently been playing the more midrange ish version that's running 4 pyro's and 4 anglers as the only creatures, 4 therapy, 1 IoK, 1 seize, etc, and, well, my question is this: how does this deck ever beat Food Chain? Even if you delay/stop the combo, it still feels unwinnable.

[Agrippa91]

Hi all. I'm not sure if this is the right deck thread, but I've recently been playing the more midrange ish version that's running 4 pyro's and 4 anglers as the only creatures, 4 therapy, 1 IoK, 1 seize, etc, and, well, my question is this: how does this deck ever beat Food Chain? Even if you delay/stop the combo, it still feels unwinnable.

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?28859-Deck-Grixis-Control-Thieves/page21

Don't let the name mislead you, the newest 4-Angler build gets discussed there in the most recent posts.

Personally I haven't played the version you do, but one quite similar with 2 cliques (more looks for therapies) and 2 tombstalkers alongside 4 strixes (additional sac outlets).

The problem was against exactly the decks like Food Chain, Alluren or 4c-control: More grindy and slower decks that had some sort of good card advantage engine. I saw that while my deck was great at disrupting the opponent and could get some 2-for-1s with strixes and therapies, I didn't really have a good way to pull ahead.

Also Therapy seemed waaay worse than in any sort of combo deck because once you're both in topdeck mode there's just so much answers he could have in his hand + brainstorm.

How can you fix this? Not quite sure, but I know for a fact that Anglers are very good agianst BUG (because they lack the necessary removal spells) IF you can get rid of their strixes. I'd consider bringing in ancient grudge alongside your pyroblasts to get more efficient answers. That card is quite good against certain BUG builds, against Alluren you can even go up to 2 Grudges because they play so many artifact creatures.

The combo itself of course is quite annyoing because Grixis doesn't run enchantment removal besides the occasional engineered explosives.

The key I think is to play aggressively: Don't try to outgrind them, you can't. When the game goes too long they'll get their engine online and you'll lose.
Instead try to disrupt them, saving your removal and counters for strixes and the occasional annoying shaman.

[potatodavid]

Played the deck last night. 3 rounds. Went 2-1.

Elves 2-1
RB reanimator 0-2 (He just had the nuts and I punted HARD on a therapy)
Sneak and show 2-0

Discussing with the sneak and show player. Game 2 i boarded out 4x deathrites and 2x Stifle. He told me that was likely incorrect, and I should never board out the deathrites. This was my first time running the deck, so I honestly didn't know. I mean I still beat him 2-0 mostly because stifle, wasteland and Zombie Mudfish are just absurd.

What I boarded in
2x Pyroblast
2x Diabolic Edict
2x Spell pierce (i don't own a fluster storm)

I felt like removing DRS in favor of countermagic was more beneficial than a generally slow clock. Thoughts?

[Agrippa91]

You want to board out your removal spells, save for perhaps 1-2 bolts of potential lavamancer, as well as your TNN if you play one. The next cut would be Gurmag Angler though that one can be quite nice because it doesn't get hit by their red removal.

[potatodavid]

You want to board out your removal spells, save for perhaps 1-2 bolts of potential lavamancer, as well as your TNN if you play one. The next cut would be Gurmag Angler though that one can be quite nice because it doesn't get hit by their red removal.

See I kept bolt in, just because bloodmoon could happen and I wanted to be able to cast at least a spell or two. I see your point though. I'll definitely keep this in mind.

[LewisCBR]

See I kept bolt in, just because bloodmoon could happen and I wanted to be able to cast at least a spell or two. I see your point though. I'll definitely keep this in mind.

Are you playing the Stifle version of Grixis Delver? I like to side out Stifles against S&S, and bring in Therapy. Usually, for me, it looks like -2 TNN, -3 Stifle, -1 Forked Bolt, -1 Lightning Bolt for +1 Fluster, +2 Pyroblast, +1 Pithing Needle (for Sneak Attack), +1 Diabolic Edict, +2 Cabal Therapy.

I dont like TNN because the last thing i want to do is tap out on turn 2 or 3 to play him. Angler is great because on turn 3 he usually still just costs one mana, leaving mana open for disruption and counter magic.

[potatodavid]

Are you playing the Stifle version of Grixis Delver? I like to side out Stifles against S&S, and bring in Therapy. Usually, for me, it looks like -2 TNN, -3 Stifle, -1 Forked Bolt, -1 Lightning Bolt for +1 Fluster, +2 Pyroblast, +1 Pithing Needle (for Sneak Attack), +1 Diabolic Edict, +2 Cabal Therapy.

I dont like TNN because the last thing i want to do is tap out on turn 2 or 3 to play him. Angler is great because on turn 3 he usually still just costs one mana, leaving mana open for disruption and counter magic.

I am currently playing the stifle version of the deck. I think your strategy makes the most sense. I'll remember to do something like this moving forward.

[Gotuso]

Won a small (25 people) tournament today with my take on Grixis Delver, winning everything 2-0 :


Land (19)

4x Flooded Strand
4x Polluted Delta
1x Tropical Island
3x Underground Sea
3x Volcanic Island
4x Wasteland

Sorcery (9)

3x Collective Brutality
4x Ponder
2x Thoughtseize

Instant (17)

4x Brainstorm
4x Daze
4x Force of Will
4x Lightning Bolt
1x Thought Scour

Creature (15)

4x Deathrite Shaman
4x Delver of Secrets Flip
2x Gurmag Angler
2x Snapcaster Mage
3x True-Name Nemesis

Sideboard (15)

1x Ancient Grudge
1x Collective Brutality
2x Diabolic Edict
1x Fatal Push
1x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Invasive Surgery
1x Kolaghan's Command
1x Marsh Casualties
2x Pyroblast
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Thoughtseize
1x Vendilion Clique

The idea behind this was to convert a 4c Delver list from Ben Friedman (see this article (http://www.gatheringmagic.com/benfriedman-12232016-the-ultimate-guide-to-4-color-delver/)), replacing the Abrupt Decay's with Collective Brutality to give the deck more flexibility and answers. It means the deck is a bit slower and has less explosive draws but hopefully makes up for that with more resilience and 3 maindeck TNN's.

My games where against Elves, U/W Stoneblade, Eldrazi, Eldrazi and Shardless BUG. Collective Brutality was amazing against Elves, killing a key creature and grabbing a spell every time. It was ok against Stoneblade and Shardless, acted as removal for Stoneforge/Deathrite but I boarded some/all of them out in game 2. Against Eldrazi they where bad. I managed to kill a Mimic and an Endless One with them but I think that's best case scenario.

After the tournament I'm still not sure about the build even though I did great. If Eldrazi is popular then Collective Brutality might not be good enough. Even though I won twice I feel as though that matchup is pretty poor. Another card I'm really unsure about is Snapcaster Mage. In a slightly slower build it seems good. But I just never draw them. The 3 tournaments I played with Snapcasters I rarely drew one. True-Name Nemesis and Delver where the decks mvp's. I really like 3 TNN maindeck and I can't see myself running an even slower build without Delvers in them.
As for the sideboard; Diabolic Edict was good. I think I would rather have Strix vs Eldrazi, but Edict was great against TNN. The mvp was Kolaghan's Command, winning me games 2 against Stoneforge and Eldrazi. I'd really love to fit in a Dread of Night and I'm thinking of cutting Marsh Casualties or the 4th Collective Brutality. BB is pretty difficult to cast, especially since a lot of TNN decks run Wasteland.

Has anyone else experimented with a Grixis Delver deck with Collective Brutality and/or Snapcaster Mage? Did you like it? I'm not sure if I should continue this experiment or just go back to a more standard Young Pyromancer list.

[cheerios]

Hey guys,

I played the list below to a 2nd place finish. I was 1st after swiss and lost to the mirror in the finals:

4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
3 Young Pyromancer
1 Gurmag Angler
2 True Name Nemesis
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
1 Spell Pierce
2 Cabal Therapy
1 Dismember
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Wasteland
4 misty rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
2 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island

3 Surgical Extraction
2 Pyroblast
1 Forked bolt
1 Pithing Needle
1 True Name Nemesis
1 grim lavamancer
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Ancient Grudge
3 diabolic edict
1 Vendilion Clique

I opted to play 3 TNNs in the 75 for the decks with Swords to Plowshares and grindy match ups. Played with 3 edicts since there's usually a lot of Reanimator, Eldrazi, and Turbo Depths in my meta. This list was designed to grind but should still be able win fast.

RD 1 Miracles 2-0
TNN, YP and cabal therapy is too strong vs them.

RD 2 Infect 2-1
Won game 1 and 3 thanks to a YP and a lot of removal. I was not really sure what to take out here since I had too much removal in my sb.

RD 3 Miracles 2-0
TNN and Delver was too much when he had no white source.

RD 4 Grixis Delver ID
Eventually lost to this guy in the finals

RD 5 Elves ID

Quarters RD1 Miracles opponent 2-1
He lost to a couple of cabal therapies in game 1. Game 2 he decieded to board in leyline of sanctity against me. My hand was a couple of probes and a lot of burn spells. I lost to mentor and Jace shortly. On game 3 I decided swap some surgicals for a couple of burn spells aiming to hit Terminus or cantrips. Won this very tight game thanks to YP and TNN. Monastery mentor is scary!

Semis Dredge 2-0
I forced his turn 1 faithless looting and went home with double delver and YP. Almost same thing happened game 2.

Finals Grixis Delver (with Stifle) 0-2
My YP got killed and Angler made short work of me on game 1. My opponent drew 4 wastelands in the first 6 turns on game 2. Can't beat that.

post mortem:
a) 3 edicts are a lot
b) sideboarding in this deck is difficult
c) TNN is great vs grindy match ups but too slow against the mirror
d) I think I needed the 2nd Angler vs mirror
e) I can see myself adding the 2nd Angler for the 3rd YP in the MD. I might swap the 3rd edict for dnt/mentor hate or YP. Clique was kinda meh. Only boarded it against miracles but it just ate a swords.
f) Grixis delver is strong.

I would appreciate some tips on sideboarding, specifically the mirror.

[drocker23]

Hey guys,

I would appreciate some tips on sideboarding, specifically the mirror.

Jeff Hoogland just wrote an article on StarCityGames about this deck as well as sideboarding. it's a two part article so make sure you read both parts. it will likely answer a lot of questions you might still have.

[cheerios]

Jeff Hoogland just wrote an article on StarCityGames about this deck as well as sideboarding. it's a two part article so make sure you read both parts. it will likely answer a lot of questions you might still have.

I already saw the link in reddit and asked him some questions. Thanks for the feedback. :)

[LewisCBR]

I won a small tournament this past Sunday, but decided to do a Tourny Report about it anyways over on Reddit. :)


https://www.reddit.com/r/MTGLegacy/comments/6s6xrs/tourny_report_ew_trialcash_tournament_ft_stifle/

[Sturtzilla]

Greetings All!

I have been a long time Delver player. In the past I have played RUG and BUG delver variants for much of my Legacy career. However, with the banning of Sensei's Divining Top and subsequent decrease in value of Counterbalance, I have found it much less important to include Abrupt Decay in my 75 Delver cards. Due to this and the increase of the overall speed of the format, I have now been playing Grixis Delver for a couple weeks at my LGS.

I have been playing Jeff Hoogland's most recent list which was mentioned above and can be found in these links:

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/35495_Building-Grixis-Delver.html

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/35560_Playing-Grixis-Delver--Part-2.html

After three weeks of play, I can fully attest that the deck is very solid. I have finished 4-1, 3-1 and 3-1 in the past three week for a combined 10-3 record. Two of these match losses were likely due to inexperience with the deck. A quick breakdown of my matches from the past three weeks are as follows:

Week 1
Round 1 - BUG Food Chain [2-0]
Round 2 - Death and Taxes [0-2]
Round 3 - UWR Delver [2-0]
Round 4 - ANT [2-1]
Round 5 - Merfolk [2-0]

Week 2
Round 1 - Aggro Loam [2-1]
Round 2 - Aggro Loam [0-2]
Round 3 - Lands [2-0]
Round 4 - UR Delver [2-0]

Week 3
Round 1 - Burn [2-1]. I had enough counters and clogged up the board in games 2 and 3.
Round 2 - Deathblade [2-0]. Maindeck Kolaghan's Command was a beating in game one. Game 2 he mulliganed and I wasted his one land. Opponent bemoans not owning a third Volcanic Island so that he could play Grixis Delver, which he believes is a better deck.
Round 3 - Burn [1-2]. Had the right cards in game 2. My removal and counters didn't line up right in games 1 and 3. These were both very close though.
Round 4 - Non Red Nic Fit [2-0]. Opponent mulligans in game 1 and I got to double Cabal Therapy him. Game 2 he stabilizes at 2 life, with an Elspeth, Sun's Champion to stonewall my army of elemental tokens. I chain an string of cantrips together to find a Lightning Bolt to finish him.

Overall the deck has felt very good. I think the currently maindeck configuration is very solid. I had been running a Fire // Ice in the Kolaghan's Command slot a few week back. The Command has felt far superior every time that I have drawn it. I think Hoogland's listed sideboard is a very solid starting point. It probably is or nearly is optimal for a large event; however, for a local metagame, the board might need some work. I may have to dedicate a slot or two towards the Burn match up. I am exactly 50% in games, but even the games that you win seem to be tight. Any thoughts on sideboard inclusions for that match up would be appreciated. Anyway, thanks for reading! I would be happy to hear any feedback.

[Misersoneof]

Greetings All!

I have been a long time Delver player. In the past I have played RUG and BUG delver variants for much of my Legacy career. However, with the banning of Sensei's Divining Top and subsequent decrease in value of Counterbalance, I have found it much less important to include Abrupt Decay in my 75 Delver cards. Due to this and the increase of the overall speed of the format, I have now been playing Grixis Delver for a couple weeks at my LGS.

I have been playing Jeff Hoogland's most recent list which was mentioned above and can be found in these links:

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/35495_Building-Grixis-Delver.html

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/35560_Playing-Grixis-Delver--Part-2.html

After three weeks of play, I can fully attest that the deck is very solid. I have finished 4-1, 3-1 and 3-1 in the past three week for a combined 10-3 record. Two of these match losses were likely due to inexperience with the deck. A quick breakdown of my matches from the past three weeks are as follows:

Week 1
Round 1 - BUG Food Chain [2-0]
Round 2 - Death and Taxes [0-2]
Round 3 - UWR Delver [2-0]
Round 4 - ANT [2-1]
Round 5 - Merfolk [2-0]

Week 2
Round 1 - Aggro Loam [2-1]
Round 2 - Aggro Loam [0-2]
Round 3 - Lands [2-0]
Round 4 - UR Delver [2-0]

Week 3
Round 1 - Burn [2-1]. I had enough counters and clogged up the board in games 2 and 3.
Round 2 - Deathblade [2-0]. Maindeck Kolaghan's Command was a beating in game one. Game 2 he mulliganed and I wasted his one land. Opponent bemoans not owning a third Volcanic Island so that he could play Grixis Delver, which he believes is a better deck.
Round 3 - Burn [1-2]. Had the right cards in game 2. My removal and counters didn't line up right in games 1 and 3. These were both very close though.
Round 4 - Non Red Nic Fit [2-0]. Opponent mulligans in game 1 and I got to double Cabal Therapy him. Game 2 he stabilizes at 2 life, with an Elspeth, Sun's Champion to stonewall my army of elemental tokens. I chain an string of cantrips together to find a Lightning Bolt to finish him.

Overall the deck has felt very good. I think the currently maindeck configuration is very solid. I had been running a Fire // Ice in the Kolaghan's Command slot a few week back. The Command has felt far superior every time that I have drawn it. I think Hoogland's listed sideboard is a very solid starting point. It probably is or nearly is optimal for a large event; however, for a local metagame, the board might need some work. I may have to dedicate a slot or two towards the Burn match up. I am exactly 50% in games, but even the games that you win seem to be tight. Any thoughts on sideboard inclusions for that match up would be appreciated. Anyway, thanks for reading! I would be happy to hear any feedback.

That seems like some pretty extensive testing. I am planning on running a similar list to Hoogland's tomorrow at a small local tournament but with a few changes. I want to know, how good was the snapcaster in the main? It seems that even with the higher than average land count I have a hard time justifying the slot. If you didn't own any snapcasters what would you run instead?

[Agrippa91]

I think a 1-of Hydroblast in the sideboard is a very nice thing to have. Personally I don't like all 4 wastelands against burn since it's basically a spell that prevents 2 PoP damage, against any other card its dead.
Now hydroblast not only helps against burn, but also against Blood-Moon decks which we can struggle against, Sneak&Show and Grixis, all relatively popular decks. Even against lands it's a worthy slot imo since it hits gamble, molten vortex and p-fire.
I wouldn't recommend it against the new UWR Miracles deck though, most of them play 5-6 red cards at most and I found it stranding in my hand far too often.

[Sturtzilla]

That seems like some pretty extensive testing. I am planning on running a similar list to Hoogland's tomorrow at a small local tournament but with a few changes. I want to know, how good was the snapcaster in the main? It seems that even with the higher than average land count I have a hard time justifying the slot. If you didn't own any snapcasters what would you run instead?

I would say a decent amount of testing. As evident from the previous post, there is no testing versus some of the new decks to beat, such as, the Grixis Tempo mirror, Elves, Czech Pile and UW Miracles. I would like to have a bit more testing against these decks in particular. As a 1-of, the SCM, TNN, Gurmag and Command are less frequently drawn. However each of these cards tends to be rather high impact when resolved. I have drawn the SCM a number of times, I find that I most frequently snapcast Lightning Bolt to help break board parity. I have done this a handful of times. In my first game against Deathblade, I natural drew both the SCM and the Command. My opponent scooped before it would have been relevant; however, if he had drawn hotter and slogged on, I would have been able to flashback the command for a second piece of equipment. It likely would have sealed the game. If you don't have access to SCM, depending on your metagame and access, I would either go to first two TNN or second two Gurmag. I think TNN and Gurmag both make the fair match ups a little better. This could also become a flex slot for an expected meta.



I think a 1-of Hydroblast in the sideboard is a very nice thing to have. Personally I don't like all 4 wastelands against burn since it's basically a spell that prevents 2 PoP damage, against any other card its dead.
Now hydroblast not only helps against burn, but also against Blood-Moon decks which we can struggle against, Sneak&Show and Grixis, all relatively popular decks. Even against lands it's a worthy slot imo since it hits gamble, molten vortex and p-fire.
I wouldn't recommend it against the new UWR Miracles deck though, most of them play 5-6 red cards at most and I found it stranding in my hand far too often.

Hydroblast would be a fine option against Burn and the other decks that you have listed. I was also thinking about a Umezawa's Jitte for both Burn and for other fair match ups. If it connects, it ends up giving loads of flexibility and takes over the game on both the axes of damage races and board presence.

[Agrippa91]

I don't like Jitte for 2 reasons:
The first one is: It's 4 mana. Especially against those fast tempo-decks like Grixis and Burn that can be really expensive when your opponent just bolts the creature. The second reason is that in those tempo matches I also feel like the opponent kills pretty much any creature on sight, so the chance of having jitte and no creature, thus making Jitte a dead card, are pretty high

Against decks like Elves on the other side they have so much bounce that negates Jitte and D&T has revoker, though Jitte is probably at its best here.

Sure you can say "but what if I have an Angler/TNN vs. burn or a delver/TNN vs Elves? What if I already have a token engine going with YP?
Well, in that case you're in a fine shape most of the time anyways, right? I almost feel like Jitte is a bit of a "win-more" card in delver where you only have a limited amount of (must-kill) creatures compared to something like D&T or stoneblade with its value etb-creatures: It helps closing out games, but only when you already have a decent board.
An additional (mass) removal spell on the other hand is just always good for its efficiency and non-requirement of any additional cards like creatures to equip. A card that is removal AND counterspell is just about everything you want though of course hydroblast can be awkward against Grixis at times. Still, Pyromancer, Bolt and Pyroblast are enough high-impact targets to make it worth having it as a one-of imo.

[Stevestamopz]

I agree with Agrippa. Jitte sounds like it would be nutso -especially in Peezy lists- but every time I've played Jitte in Delver it's just never managed to get there. Sure, it saved my ass against Burn once when I gained 8 life over 2 turns but that was the only time it ever managed to do anything.

[cheerios]

Have you guys tried Lili, the last hope? I'm planning to use her against creature decks and grindy decks.

[Agrippa91]

I haven't tested Liliana herself but any 3-mana noncreature spell that's not an instant is very hard to resolve against D&T and vs. Delver decks in my experience, especially if it's double black. When you're going to play BB you should rather get Marsh Casualties as it answers TNN, too. I wouldn't recommend that with the standard 2 Usea version though...

[Sturtzilla]

Greetings All!

I have played in two more weekly legacy events since my last post. Piloting the same list [Hoogland's] to a 3-2 and 3-0-1 results.

Last Week
Round 1: Burn [2-0]. This deck was a bit more combo oriented, favoring Blazing Shoal and Thunderous Wrath for the more conventional inclusions.
Round 2: DnT [2-0]. The maindeck seems fine here. Postboard there is so much removal that it seems hard for them to really do much creature-wise.
Round 3: Lands [1-2]. This MU still feels pretty bad. I understand that this is an unfavorable MU. How are you all beating it?
Round 4: TES [2-0]. Opponent goes off in G1, but doesn't know that Burning Wish exiles itself. He fizzles. G2 I blind hit double Dark Ritual on a Therapy.
Round 5: Czech Pile [0-2]. I think I kept two loose hand here. He stabilized at low life both games and then was able to come back.


Last Night
Round 1: Dredge [2-0]. I have a fast hand in G1 and just edge him out in the race. G2 I have DRS, Daze and FoW + blue card. He doesn't get anything into his yard until DRS is active.
Round 2: BUG Midrange/Control [2-0]. I think both of my hands were pretty strong. In G1 I am able to protect a Pyromancer to clog up the board while TNN gets in. G2 I have T1 DRS, into T2 Pyro + Therapy. I blind name TNN, hit; see 2 Brainstorms, flashback to snag both of them as opponent was tapped out. He doesn't really get off the ground.
Round 3: Aluren Combo [1-1-1]. This match up seems hard. Their deck has so much value... I am able to sneak one game but we go to time and draw. Also worth noting, the game that I lost, I ended the game with 3 lands in hand and 3-4 in play. So maybe this result is a bit on the bad side of variance.
Round 4: Food Chain Combo [2-0]. K. Command was insane here. I cast and flashed it back in G1 with an SCM. In G2 I drew both and shattered two creatures and made him discard two cards. He was hellbent and I still had all these.

Overall still very happy with the deck. I am still tinkering with how I might tune the sideboard. The lands match up could use some help... however, I am not sure how much better we can do there. The more midrangey match ups feel pretty even but very draw dependent. We are more nimble, but they have bigger/better late game. Thanks for the feedback on Hydroblast and Umezawa's Jitte, from the last post. Any thoughts on improving the lands MU would be appreciated. Thanks for reading!

[Anachronism]

The lands match up could use some help... however, I am not sure how much better we can do there...Any thoughts on improving the lands MU would be appreciated.

I think that -Null Rod +Pithing Needle is the simplest and most defensible sideboard change that will give you equity in the Lands matchup without hurting too many other matchups. It is also very flexible, which is important because they have so many effective plans against you: mana denial, control, or Marit Lage. Wasteland, Maze of Ith, and Thespian's Stage are all defensible names depending on your perceived position. Needle is also nice to have against Sneak and Show.

The loss of Null Rod is probably most noticeable in the Death and Taxes matchup where Null Rod stops equipment and Aether Vials at the same time, but the utility of Needle can be nice to have here too. There's also Dread of Night to fix this matchup if it comes to that.

[Agrippa91]

I have a buddy playing lands and think I have a pretty good understanding of the matchup (regular RG vs. stifle grixis).

Having tested Null Rod in this matchup I came to the conclusion that it's truly abysmal:
It just comes down to the fact that you try to "counter" something for 0 mana with a 2 mana spell that doesn't even provide card advantage. The lands player will get at least 1 activation out of his Mox before you shut it down, especially on his very important first turn.
On the other hand if you drop the Null Rod without the opponent having a Mox they'll just keep them in hand and improve their gambles.
It's not even like cutting lands of its colors is always the way to go. On the contrary, I'd say I go for this strategy only about 10-20% of the time.

Ancient Grudge on the other hand you're pretty much forced to bring in. Pretty much every lands player has at least 1 Chalice of the Void in his sidebaord which pretty much ruins our entire game plan.
The nice thing here is that it can shut down Mox, too. I only do so when I have a FoW for a potential Chalice though and when I'm confident that it will actually constrict him off mana, otherwise the potential of getting Bojuka Bog'ed is not worth it imo.

Pithing Needle on the other hand is (together with Surgical Extraction) the best way to fight lands. Not only does it shut off the combo itself, it also helps against Maze of Ith (often times their only way to get rid of Angler) and Molten Vortex (slow and painful death, "chalice" for your small creatures).
If the opponent is on the Ghost Quarter/Rishadan Port plan you can name those and buy you tons of time.

The greatest thing actually is that the lands players rarely bring in Krosan Grips against us. Rightfully so, it can be pretty abysmal if we don't draw our 1 or 2 needles.

Diabolic Edict is good, but a bit overrated imo since it's really only helping against surprise wins from the opponent if you have the game on lockdown. Otherwise they'll just loam back their combo the following turn. It has the nice upside of also helping against Tireless Tracker which can be pretty good agianst us in the long game since they offer card advantage outside of the graveyard.

The minimum package if you want to be prepared for lands imo is 2 Surgicals, 1 Needle, 1 Diabolic Edict and 1 Ancient Grudge.
Personally I like packing 2 Grudges these days, just too many Chalices for my taste (hence also no reason to run Null Rod over it as your piece of artifact hate).
Also Hydroblast is a nice option since it hits Gamble, Molten Vortex and P-Fire.
Flusterstorm is nice, if you're lucky you can hit a timely crop rotation and aren't forced to force it. At worst it always pitches to FoW.
If you're playing the YP version I only recommend therapy if you don't have anything else to bring in, I still like it better than Daze. Your default name past turn 1 should be Crop Rotation, sometimes Loam if you have an active DRS.
If you're not playing with YP I find Thoughtseize to be a much better discard option. Especially postboard lands will have lots of nonland cards that can really screw us and they will often times wait until they can drop them past a potential Daze or Spell Pierce.

I like having around 8-10 cards to bring in so I can bring out Dazes and Removal Spells (bolts are the last ones to cut).


GAMEPLAN IN GENERAL (talking about the stifle version here, no clue how you plan to beat lands without this card):

Here are some points that are all desirable to achieve, the more you have the more likely it is for you to win the game:

- Have an emergency FoW:
It's always good to have a FoW in the pocket, even more important imo is to be very conservative about it when the game goes long. Your opponent will try to bait out a potential FoW, so make sure to only use it when it will result in you losing the game or falling behind massively.
This can be a Gamble or Exploration early that threatens to wasteland-lock you out of the game or a P-Fire on your active DRS so you no longer control the gy.

- Get an idea what their hand looks like:
Since lands doesn't play brainstorm its opener is very important. Getting to see their hand with Therapy or Thoughtseize on t1 lets you evaluate how quickly they're planning to go off. Loam also makes it that you often times know almost the entire hand even when your look was several turns ago.

- Hold up Wasteland + stifle:
A wasteland can stop the combo, but is very vulnerable to a forced activation by an opposing wasteland or a port. Stifle prevents opposing wastelands by stifling their activation and opposing ghost-quarters by letting them tap down your wasteland, then stifling the thespian's stage. You can then destroy one of the combo pieces the next turn (~80% stage).
Bonus points if you have a way to get rid of the opposing wasteland/quarter in the gy.

- Get your DRS online with counterspell backup:
An active DRS can leave Loams stuck in the land player's hand and make gambles actual gambles. A Force does real work here because it can hit any recurring card so the shaman can eat itas well as any threat to the shaman himself. Spell snare does a good job here as well, countering Loam and P-Fire (+Chalice).

- Pithing Needle:
Don't try to get cheeky and get this online as soon as possible. This prevents your opponent from renaming his stage, forcing you to name whatever his stage is called before topdecking another one. Naming Maze of Ith is very aggressive and should be an exception. It can be viable though when your other creatures are locked out by P-Fire or when you can expect to win quickly enough.

- Surgical in hand:
Be careful with this one, the lands player can play around you targeting his P-Fire (Crop-Rotation for Grove) or Loam (cycling). Having information about his hand or a counterspell (stifle, timely flusterstorm) prevents this from happening.
A very safe target is Dark Depths when there's none on the battlefield. Doing so during their draw step can get an additional one, but could also draw them into a crop rotation so be careful when you don't have a counter for that card.

- Have a clock:
People will disagree but this is imo the least important goal you should have. DRS is an exception because he also functions as disruption.
All the other creatures are pathetic compared to a 20/20 and it shouldn't be a priority to bring the online if you can instead disrupt your opponent, e.g. by holding up stifle or a softcounter.
That said if you have nothing else left slam and pray, especially TNN can really make them sweat since it's an actual clock that is impossible to deal with outside of drop of honey.

- Diabolic Edict:
Not much to say here except the fact that this card can function as a safety net, allowing you to be much more aggressive and tapping out while not having to fear a 20/20.


I see myself very much as the control deck in this matchup, trying to get past the first few turns where a surprise Marit Lage or a wasteland-lock can end the game quickly. Achieving the goals above helps slowly tightening the noose on the lands deck while slowly chipping away at the opponent's life total.

[Whitefaces]

This is really great advice. One of my friends has been playing Lands for a long time so I've been subject to hours and hours of testing vs it pre-GPs etc, all your points ring true. I especially like pointing out the importance of knowing their hand.

[Stevestamopz]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29nGjv1k8I8

Finally got a feature match with me playing Team Australia, check it out.

[Agrippa91]

Congrats on the feature match, Steven!
Given that you put it up here I'll analyze it a bit, I know you can take it: :wink:

G1:

- That FoW on the Swords in g1 interests me, would you do the same play in hindsight? Your Stalker seems to get blocked by the spirits for days regardless and you already had a clock in TNN, I definitely would've held onto FoW there. I mean, the sword gains you life so the threat of getting outraced is not really present.

- Can you tell us how you sideboarded? I know that you have Snapcasters in the board which seem good, personally I wouldn't have changed anything in my list except for cutting 2 Fatal Pushes for 2 Marsh Casualties (TNN, Strix, Lingering Souls).
I like FoW quite a lot against decks that aim to slam fatties like Nic Fit does, but there's another reason why I'd keep in all of them: You're running such a variety of blue countermagic that sometimes you get stuck with Daze, Spell Pierce, Snare or Stifle in hand. Having a FoW in hand can act as a safety net to make sure that you actually ARE able to counter a haymaker if everything else fails.
I disagree with the commentators on the fact that you want to board out forces in long, grindy matchups because while this is true in general there are exceptions, e.g. the new Miracles list and in this case Nic Fit.
It's not really card-disadvantage when they need at least 3-4 lands to operate while you're cool with 2-3.

G2:

- There have been multiple discussions on this thread about what threat to play on t1 and they pretty much all conclude that you want drs on t1 if possible. Any particular reason why you lead with Delver in g2? Especially the therapy in the gy would've enticed me to go for t1 drs. If he has explorer in hand it's tough luck, but you can Daze any 2-drop like Strix or GSZ for Explorer.
Daze otd is another reason why DRS t1 is my preferred line, it doesn't leave you behind tempo-wise and you still have access to 2 mana on t2.

- Bolting Steward of Valeron was unnecessary imo, it wouldn't have brought the Ascension online in time. More importantly leaving him would've led to a 2-for-2 when Gene goes for a wrath, be it deluge or deed. Bolt also puts you in a spot where a deluge just isn't viable after a certain point.

- Result-oriented thoughtseize was great, but I feel like this is not where you want to be in this matchup. In my experience Nic-Fit often times ends up either topdecking or mana-screwed, thoughtseize isn't great in either scenario. I'd much rather go for the land disruption, then deal with everything important they play out once they've stabilized. Might just be a preference of playstyle.


Thx for posting your match, it's good to not be the only one playing a pyromancer-less grixis tempo shell.
How are the snapcasters playing out? I've asked you on a stream once and you've said you didn't have enough data yet, has anything changed?

[Stevestamopz]

- That FoW on the Swords in g1 interests me, would you do the same play in hindsight? Your Stalker seems to get blocked by the spirits for days regardless and you already had a clock in TNN, I definitely would've held onto FoW there. I mean, the sword gains you life so the threat of getting outraced is not really present.

Yes, I would do it 100 times over. Tombstalker gives me huge board position and bullies my opponent's position... or stalks him if you will :laugh: There are few cards that he has past that 1 maindeck swords that can beat Stalker, but many cards that can beat the lone True-Name + Force.


- Can you tell us how you sideboarded? I know that you have Snapcasters in the board which seem good, personally I wouldn't have changed anything in my list except for cutting 2 Fatal Pushes for 2 Marsh Casualties (TNN, Strix, Lingering Souls).
I like FoW quite a lot against decks that aim to slam fatties like Nic Fit does, but there's another reason why I'd keep in all of them: You're running such a variety of blue countermagic that sometimes you get stuck with Daze, Spell Pierce, Snare or Stifle in hand. Having a FoW in hand can act as a safety net to make sure that you actually ARE able to counter a haymaker if everything else fails.
I disagree with the commentators on the fact that you want to board out forces in long, grindy matchups because while this is true in general there are exceptions, e.g. the new Miracles list and in this case Nic Fit.
It's not really card-disadvantage when they need at least 3-4 lands to operate while you're cool with 2-3.

I can't recall off memory, but I know I brought in at least 2 Snapcasters, 1 Cage, 1 Thoughtseize and the Marsh Casualties. It was over a month ago this was recorded so forgive me. You'll note from the coverage that I took cards in and out a lot. His deck is essentially a singleton deck so it's hard to board for. It has some weird Haakon/Zur's weirding lock so Cage is good.


- There have been multiple discussions on this thread about what threat to play on t1 and they pretty much all conclude that you want drs on t1 if possible. Any particular reason why you lead with Delver in g2? Especially the therapy in the gy would've enticed me to go for t1 drs. If he has explorer in hand it's tough luck, but you can Daze any 2-drop like Strix or GSZ for Explorer.
Daze otd is another reason why DRS t1 is my preferred line, it doesn't leave you behind tempo-wise and you still have access to 2 mana on t2.

I had the blind read that he had Swords in hand so I wanted him to Swords the Delver and not the Shaman. I asked him before I made the decision and he said no in a way that confirmed my read. It's not an exact science, but when your day-job is based around dealing with liars you get good at it. You'll note that following that Daze I drew a 2nd Delver but played the DRS instead. I agree DRS is better on turn 1 but if it's just going to be mimicing Goblin Lackey getting swordsed, I'd rather lose Delver than Shaman.


Result-oriented thoughtseize was great, but I feel like this is not where you want to be in this matchup. In my experience Nic-Fit often times ends up either topdecking or mana-screwed, thoughtseize isn't great in either scenario. I'd much rather go for the land disruption, then deal with everything important they play out once they've stabilized. Might just be a preference of playstyle.

I only brought in the one, it was dope that it came up that way but I agree that it's not spectacular and I definitely didn't want all three. If you consider ramp decks "yahtzee" decks then Thoughtseize can actually be very good if timed right.


Thx for posting your match, it's good to not be the only one playing a pyromancer-less grixis tempo shell.
How are the snapcasters playing out? I've asked you on a stream once and you've said you didn't have enough data yet, has anything changed?

Snapcaster is indeed good, but I don't think this style of deck is good anymore so... yeah. Czech Pile is just too much of a beating sadly.

This was the list I played for ref.
http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=16445&d=301609&f=LE

[Agrippa91]

In my experience in order to win against 4c-control without playing it yourself you nowadays have to either:
- play a combo deck fast enough that their lacks of Daze and their clunky snapcasters bite them.
- play a midrange/control deck greedy enough to outvalue them.
- play a delver deck efficient enough to get them.

I've tested the last 2 options because they fit my playstyle the most.
Long story short it's almost impossible to play the value game with them. I'd have to play a lot of cards that would simply be too clunky against combo and delver strategies to even have a shot. You end up playing the exact game they want, it's like trying to outvalue Miracles back in the days after they shifted to Predict.

Having tested those variants I honestly prefer a hyper efficient delver deck full of 1-mana answers. Especially 2 Spell Snares and 2 Spell Pierces mainboard are a beating against them in my experience. Angler costing 1 instead of 2 is also good because you can generally cast him a turn earlier and never lose tempo, even against STP decks. Postboard you also have effective answers against everything that could stand in his way.

Especially stifle really shines because they can't just board into mono-removal spells like vs. the therapy version, they also have to commit to low-resource counterwars which delver excels at. I've had several games where their entire hand is full of removal and snapcasters, but I had them stuck on lands unable to cast their stuff on time.

[Luca Grease]

I have to second that. Czech Pile style decks are the main reason why I've made the move to the Stifle version of Grixis Delver, and I haven't looked back since. So far, I've gone 3-0 against them on cockatrice (5-0 if we also lump Grixis Control in there), by following a very clear gameplan:

1) Deathrite Shaman must die. Leave in all your burn and bring in additional 1-mana removal from the board. On the draw, don't hesitate to force it on turn 0 if you don't have a removal spell in hand.
2) Leave all of your dazes in, even on the draw. Keep all of your Stifles and Wastelands, of course. Side out all fows on the play, leave a couple in on the draw.
3) If they manage to weather your mana denial storm and start playing their game, your best bet is usually to dig for a True Name Nemesis and try to ride it to victory.

Since their manabase is greedy as hell and relies so heavily on Deathrite Shaman, 1+2 will get you plenty of wins, while 3 will steal some games here and there. Combined together, they've granted me a very reasonable success rate so far, enough that I don't consider 4c midrange decks to be on top of my list of problematic matchups at the moment.

[Luca Grease]

I have to second that. Czech Pile style decks are the main reason why I've made the move to the Stifle version of Grixis Delver, and I haven't looked back since. So far, I've gone 3-0 against them on cockatrice (5-0 if we also lump Grixis Control in there), by following a very clear gameplan:

1) Deathrite Shaman must die. Leave in all your burn and bring in additional 1-mana removal from the board. On the draw, don't hesitate to force it on turn 0 if you don't have a removal spell in hand.
2) Leave all of your dazes in, even on the draw. Keep all of your Stifles and Wastelands, of course. Side out all fows on the play, leave a couple in on the draw.
3) If they manage to weather your mana denial storm and start playing their game, your best bet is usually to dig for a True Name Nemesis and try to ride it to victory.

Since their manabase is greedy as hell and relies so heavily on Deathrite Shaman, 1+2 will get you plenty of wins, while 3 will steal some games here and there. Combined together, they seem to be doing a pretty fine job so far...

[Stevestamopz]

I played a testing match against the Pile and nutted on it and still lost. Triple waste, double stifle backed up by t1 DRS, T2 Delver, bolt your DRS and I still lost convincingly. Snared a strix, countered a k.command and still lost, even after landing a true-name alongside my flipped delver.

It was so awful I've switched to that deck now haha.

[FZA]

In my experience in order to win against 4c-control without playing it yourself you nowadays have to either:
- play a combo deck fast enough that their lacks of Daze and their clunky snapcasters bite them.
- play a midrange/control deck greedy enough to outvalue them.
- play a delver deck efficient enough to get them.

I've tested the last 2 options because they fit my playstyle the most.
Long story short it's almost impossible to play the value game with them. I'd have to play a lot of cards that would simply be too clunky against combo and delver strategies to even have a shot. You end up playing the exact game they want, it's like trying to outvalue Miracles back in the days after they shifted to Predict.

Having tested those variants I honestly prefer a hyper efficient delver deck full of 1-mana answers. Especially 2 Spell Snares and 2 Spell Pierces mainboard are a beating against them in my experience. Angler costing 1 instead of 2 is also good because you can generally cast him a turn earlier and never lose tempo, even against STP decks. Postboard you also have effective answers against everything that could stand in his way.

Especially stifle really shines because they can't just board into mono-removal spells like vs. the therapy version, they also have to commit to low-resource counterwars which delver excels at. I've had several games where their entire hand is full of removal and snapcasters, but I had them stuck on lands unable to cast their stuff on time.

Worth noting that if you really want to beat Pile, RG Lands eats it for breakfast. Obviously it's not an auto-win because you can lose to some timely Surgical Extractions, and Leovold can sometimes be a pain, but it's probably the most unfavorable matchup for Czech Pile overall.

Shardless BUG, which most people consider a dead archetype at this point, also has a great Pile matchup, so I'm wondering if we'll start to see that pop up again at some point. Maybe people will be tempted to try it after seeing Mengucci's recent 5-0 video.

Also, FWIW, I don't think Grixis has as bad of a Pile matchup as you guys are making it seem...sure they are naturally favored, but no deck in Legacy can really beat Grixis Delver's best draws, and sometimes they just don't have the answers they need to slow you down in the early game. I've played this matchup a decent amount, I feel like it's no worse than 40-60 from the Delver side. That's not bad enough IMO to start making drastic changes to the deck.

[Kingbrago]

Hey everyone!

I'm posting a small report of the French National's legacy side event which took place this week end near paris. There was 72 legacy players, and I top-8ed the event playing Lewis CBR's grixis delver build.
I lost in the quarterfinals, but another grixis delver made it to the finals, and lost to bug delver.

Here are the decks I faced:

R1: Dragon Tribal
Game 1 he is on the play and starts with a mountain and bolt me. I immediately put him on burn, but he does basically nothing for the whole game, just putting lands and bolting creatures. The last turn, he plays a Dragon shaman (don't remember the name, a 1/3 for 2 making your dragons cost 1 less) which tells me he's not on burn but some kind of dragon stompy deck (with no chalice as he plays bolt)

Game 2 I play a deatrite and counter a blood moon with spell pierce. I make a grave mistake of force of willing when he tries to kill my deatrite: I had no pressure and I knew his hand was 2 dragons that I saw with a probe some turns before: thunderbeak regent and Thundermaw hellkite. What I didn't know is he drew another removal and I end up losing to the dragons.

Game 3 I get early pressure, but he manages to resolve a Tundermaw hellkite and we race for a few turns. I am winning the race but he gets me with a price of progress for 6 on my lethal attack step.

0-1

R2 against Burn: I quickly win 2-0 both games having early pressure and enough counterspells to stay alive

1-1
R3 Infect
I win game 1. Game 2 I feel great with an early Grim Lavamancer but he has a spellskite and I'm unable to find other removal spells. I die to incremental poison damage. I win G3, the MU feels very favourable if you draw properly.

2-1
R4 Death and Taxes
I keep a risky hand with Wasteland and Volcanic as my only lands, a brainstorm and a Young pyro. I play volc and pass, he goes mother of Runes. On turn 2 I have the choice of playing BS and hoping for land+bolt or playing the young pyro and hoping it goes well. I choose the second line and get destroyed by a stoneforge mystic searching a Jitte.

I win G2 and 3, I don't really remember but just had a lot of pressure and enough removal spells for his dudes

3-1
R5 Elves. This is a very bad MU, but I have good opening hands in games 1 and 2 including double delver. They don't flip immediately but I quickly get a fast clock and counter his natural orders. I win 2-0 with 2 very similar games

4-1
R6 BR reanimator
Game 1 he has a chancellor and I mull to 5 on the draw. I'm unable to cast a single spell before facing a Griselbrand and concede. Game 2 and 3 play out more like it's supposed to: I counter some reanimation spells, draw my sideboard cards and win.

5-1
R7 due to my bad tie breakers (R1 lost) I am paired down against someone at 13 points. I know he's on burn and we can't ID.
Game 1 he chooses to play a more controlling game by getting rid of my shamans and delvers on sight. I counter a few spells and we end up both topdecking. I play a TNN, but he's still at 20. Fortunately I get lucky enough for me to draw some counters and wastelands to minimize POP and him drawing mostly lands.
Game 2 he also opts for this more controlling route, but I play a Gurmag and end up winning. He had Ensnaring Bridge which could have gotten me but he didn't draw it fortunately

6-1, I end up 2nd after the round and I am on the play in the top 8.

1/4 finals against modern affinity. Every player was given a foil promo Inkmoth Nexus, and he told me after the game that he just wanted this card so he took his modern deck and played in the event.

Game 1 I don't know what he's playing. I open a borderline hand with 2 stifles 3 lands and I think a force. I play land and pass, hoping to get a free win by manascrew him. But he empties his hand on turn 1 and plays a cranial plating which I have to fow. So he has an empty hand but an inkmoth and I have irrelevant cards. I can't draw anything and end up loosing to the inkmoth

Game 2 I win: counter key spells, get a gurmag into play. He resolves a champion and then another one, but I play True Name which can finish him.

Game 3 I have a good hnd with ancient grudge and removals but no pressure. I keep it and destroy his threats. Unfortunately I draw only lands then a shaman who starts draining him but it's really slow. At this point his board is just random artifacts like ornithopters and citadels. I think I drew lands for 5-6 turns in a row and lose to a ravager + Vault skirge when any removal spells or earlier creature would have won me the game.

It is a bit frustrating as the MU feels really good but sometimes you loose like this.


The deck felt great during this event, though the wins were really on tight margins and I felt if I had make minor mistakes I could have lost basically all of the matches I won. I was also a bit frustrated when flooding out, and was not really convinced by stifle in the MU I played, as it felt a bit awkward. I may test the cabal therapy version in the future,

Cheers :)

[Demitro13]

What do you guys think of Bob Huang's recent list that passes on both cabal therapy and stifle main to play extra spell pierce and 15 creatures? http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=16824&f=LE

[wowbobwow]

What do you guys think of Bob Huang's recent list that passes on both cabal therapy and stifle main to play extra spell pierce and 15 creatures? http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=16824&f=LE

Stifle isn't always necessary since we run Wastelands for mana denial. It's kind of a high variance card; either going 0% or 100%. Seems like player preference. I run my cabals in the sideboard too. I feel like you only want them in certain match-ups where attacking the hand is more useful than hitting the board with removal.

Now something that comes up very often for me is this scenario:

Turn 1 on the play, you have no idea what your opponent is playing. You have a Delver, Deathrite, a land or two and 2-3 other cards. Do you fetch, delver or fetch, deathrite? By going delver you can play the aggressive, get the potential flip and start beating face. Going deathrite you have a little insurance from being denied on mana. That's usually enough for me to go for turn 1 deathrite more often than not. What do you guys think? Small plays like this can be so complex which is why I love this game/format.

[Agrippa91]

As a rule of thumbs you should always play drs on t1. There's often this "applying pressure" argument but actually DRS is as much damage as damage deals on average after 1 turn: 2. The upside of untapping with DRS is huge: You have enough mana to sculpt your hand, keep open mana, play a wasteland, play a threat, remove one of their creatures...

[Kingbrago]

I agree on the DRS play turn 1, and it's also the opinion of bob huang: https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/delver-of-secrets-and-the-future-of-legacy/

What iterests me in bob's list is the 15th creature and the sideboard PoP. Isn't 15 a bit too much? I have been unimpressed with young pyros in lots of MUs where they feel a bit slow.

I guess the price is for the lands MU, but isn't it a better alternative, I don't really understand the rationale.


I also have a more general question: is there a MU where you would consider siding out the deathrites? In some games, against decks like Sneak and Show, I've felt that deathrite is a bit lackluster. The mana acceleration is nice, but the clock is really slow and you really need to apply fast pressure + counterspells. Drawing too much creatures like deathrite who doesnt put on a huge clock can mean you die
I've also seen people sideboard out gurmags in combo MU, but I don't really agree: they put on a really fast clock and don't get killed by pyroblast/grim lavamancer/pyroclasm or any sideboard cards coming from SnS player.

[Agrippa91]

Imo there isn't a single matchup where you should board out DRS, even in matchups where on paper he looks lackluster:
Sure he won't get many spells vs. D&T, but the mana he provides helps fighting their mana denial.
Against Red Stompy decks his mana ability can be the saving Grave.
Against Eldrazi he can provide essential life gain and acceleration to quickly power out threats while not falling behind on lands when dazing.
DRS is probably worst against Elves, but only if they have one, too. Otherwise he can block their whole team which is super important in a grindy game.

I actually think DRS is better against combo than Delver is.
Sure, his clock is lower, but against Storm he provides important gy-interaction.
Against Sneak and Show he allows you to catch up on mana while keeping your opponent off balance with wastelands and dazes. Later on he lets you play around their soft counters very nicely by keeping open his abilities. You can activate those eot if you don't need the mana to pay for counters or cast your own counterspells.
Combo decks always provide enough spells in the gy, so the clock of drs is very reliable.

I agree that Angler isn't the worst against combo and I'd rather play him than a lightning bolt. However the 1-drops and pyromancer are just better, at worst angler is stuck in your hand because your opponent plays draw-go too long and you're stuck with a bunch of reactive spells in your hand, not able to provide pressure.
Especially Young Pyromancer really excels vs. combo, providing the fastest clock (and of course the therapy synergy).
And since combo decks barely play removal you simply don't need more than 10-12 threats, otherwise you'll draw too many of them and die to the combo since combo is always faster than aggro.

The last reason why I'd never lead with delver instead of DRS vs. combo is that I'm always glad to pitch a delver to a FoW in this matchup because it means that my other blue card is either a counterspell or a cantrip to find more of those.

[JackaBo]

Deathrite is the best creature in legacy, you should never side it out

[Sturtzilla]

Greetings All!

Another week, another Legacy locals in the books. I again ran the same list (starting to lean towards tuning the sideboard). I ended 3-1 in matches losing a close match to Burn.

Round 1 - Burn - (1-2) This was traditional Burn. I got game 1. In games 2 and 3 a Goblin Guide got me 6 times between the two games giving me no lands even in tandem with my library manipulation. I think that I cast either 5 or 6 Ponders and Brainstorms between these games. It is possible in game 3 I was supposed to block with a flipped Delver earlier in the game to preserve my life total. This felt wrong during the match but it hindsight might have been right. He kind of bricked off toward the end of the game and an early block would have saved a lot of life and made his closing draws, not close the game. Thoughts?

Round 2 - BR Reanimator - (2-1) He has the nuts in game 1, on the play, Chancellor, and Dark Ritual, Entomb, Exhume. Games 2 and 3, I was able to gain control with Deathrites and Extractions. In game 3, I mulliganned to 4 (an all lander, into no lander, into Wasteland only, none of which had Surgical or FoW). I kept, DRS, Wasteland, Fetch, Ponder with a Flusterstorm on top. He kept a slower one land hand. I was able to first turn Wasteland and then begin to draw out of the mulligan. It was a wild game. When I killed him he has a single Tidespout Tyrant left as a creature to Reanimate in his library.

Round 1 - Mono Blue Jank Stasis - (2-0) I think this was a Chronatog and Stasis deck. It was pretty rough and never really got off the ground. My deck did what it was supposed to do.

Round 1 - BUG Midrange/Control - (2-1) This match up seems pretty even. I edge him out in game 1 and he stabilizes in game 2. Game 3 was pretty sweet. I got to Probe on my turn 1 on the play and then followed up with a DRS. His had was 4 lands (there were 1 or 2 fetches), Brainstorm, Divert, and an Abrupt Decay. On two I get to Therapy, he fetches and Brainstorms in response, I get to Pyroblast the Brainstorm and resolve the Therapy taking the Decay. He is kind of stuck with conditional removal/counterspell. I get a way ahead before he draws into anything to begin to stabilize.

The BUG player was the only undefeated player going into the final round. So we intentionally drew as we are friends and the payouts were flat for me between 2nd and 4th (and my breakers were poor due to a first round loss to a player who did middling). Again the deck feels great. Burn feels slightly unfavorable. I have been considering an addition of a Invasive Surgery as it is reasonably broad in its application dealing with loads of combo pieces (Life from the Loam, Reanimate, Exhume, Show and Tell, Burning Wish, Infernal Tutor to name a few; I have been seeing 1-2 BR Reanimators, 1-2 Storm variants and 1-2 Lands decks in my meta each week). It is also reasonably decent against Burn. It counters Lava Spike and Rift Bolt; this is not great, but okay. I have also been considering moving to a Pithing Needle over the Null Rod in my sideboard. This loses ground in the DnT and Storm match ups; while improving the Lands match up. Any thoughts on these changes? As always, thanks for the read and let me know if you have any thoughts or comments!

[Luca Grease]

Just a little something those frustrated about the 4c match-up might wanna try: Bitterblossom . I was scanning a tournament report in the Czech pile threat and the author mentioned being cold to it when someone brought it in against him. The trend in these 4c lists has been to trim decays in favor of more K-Commands or maindeck edict effects, to the point where a lot of lists only play 1 now. Most of them don't even have a good answer for it post board. Their best bet is finding their singleton (or 2 of at most) Marsh Casualties or Toxic Deluge, but even then that only buys some time...

[Agrippa91]

That could indeed be a pretty good card against them. Probably a bit better than Winter Orb since it doesn't get hit by K-Command.

Problem is that it's really only good against this deck, against most other decks the fact that it's slow and costs life hurts quite a bit.
It could be decent in the mirror since post-board it's either a fast race or a long grind fest.
I can see it as a 1-of in the sb, but only if your meta has enough czech pile to justify it. I think that online with all the 4c and Grixis (Delver) running around it might be worth a shot.

[Luca Grease]

Not that anyone's playing that deck anymore, but it should also be pretty good against Miracles, and against other fringe decks like Pox, Stax, etc. Regardless, it looks like 4c control is quickly becoming the new Miracles if we look at tournament results, so having a couple of slots dedicated (mostly) to them could eventually become a popular decision. Bitterblossom might not be a permanent solution, since they could just increase the number of decays or include cards like Izzet Staticaster in the board, but right now, while they are focused on fighting True-Name Nemesis (as they should be), they are leaving a huge opening for it.

As for it being decent in the mirror, that's something I've thought about too. The potential to backfire is obviously much higher there (one of the reasons I like it against 4c is that they are so poorly equipped to try and race it, since most of their creatures can't profitably attack through the freshly generated token), but I guess that taking 1 per turn is not so bad when you are stalling their Gurmag Angler and clocking back with Delver, or something... I guess only testing could settle that one.

[Agrippa91]

Angler, TNN and Bitterblossom all require different answers which could be the path to victory against 4c (deluge is often times pretty shitty against Angler).
Against Miracles it was way tougher since any enchantment left you open to a 2-for-1 from wear/tear (you had to have a pithing needle/null rod anyways).
Also any creature could be "killed" by terminus.

On another note Hydroblast is currently insane when you play on mtgo. These past leagues I ran into sooo much Stompy, Burn, TES and Grixis it's ridiculous!
Sadly I haven't played against 4c in the past 3 leagues, I'd really like some practice against that deck to determine whether I need Bitterblossom or not.

[AdventuresWithTarmo]

What do you guys think of Bob Huang's recent list that passes on both cabal therapy and stifle main to play extra spell pierce and 15 creatures? http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=16824&f=LE

I'm actually testing it myself. With. the meta being fair right now, its an alternative to playing stifle.

It makes sense to me, since DRS just makes stifle a little worse. Spell pierce has a little more usage in the late game too, against k command, jace, etc
Its. even nice to have against fatal push.


Another thing, its good against Snapcaster in a roundabout way sometimes, since 4c commits minimum 3 Mana to flashing back a spell

[Luca Grease]

Has anyone here tried Abrade? I am considering it in place of the second Ancient Grudge as part of a sideboard tweaking since I want to retain a second artifact destruction effect that can also double as an extra removal spell, especially in the delver mirrors. I know Kolaghan's Command generates CA for 1 more mana, but I find that CMC3 is A LOT more than CMC2 in this deck, especially in delver mirrors or against Death and Taxes. While grudge is clearly better against artifact-heavy decks such as Big Eldrazi, Mud or Tezzerator, the flexibility of Abrade might actually make it a comparably good card in matchups like DnT, Stoneblade, or Dragon Stompy, where you sometimes draw too many of your artifact destruction spells when you really need a removal spell instead (it's worth noting that Abrade is another out to Sanctum Prelate set on 1).

I am actually fairly confident that this card is not significantly worse than a second Ancient Grudge in matchups where you need artifact destruction, the big question is whether it is good enough in matchups where you bring it in purely as an extra removal spell. Is 2 mana to kill a DRS/Delver/Young Pyro just too inefficient? I am inclined to think it isn't, since Diabolic Edict has become a staple of Grixis Delver sideboards by performing a similar, twofold role: specialized answer to a few problematic cards that also doubles as less-efficient, but still serviceable removal in a pinch. It might be that drawing both of these effects while battling 1-mana threats slows your tempo down too much, but slightly clunkier removal is still better than no removal in matchups that are often decided by who can stick the last threat...

[Agrippa91]

I've played another 2-mana removal in Fire/Ice when I started playing delver and the 2 mana really really hurt, especially in the mirror.
Edict's upside is that it can kill Gurmag and TNN, Abrade just stays a bad fiery impulse.

I don't see how you can have too few cards for the mirror given that sideboards play flusterstorms, pyroblasts and some other form of removal anyways. Besides you should leave in like 2 Forces, there are some situations in the mirror where you just have to counter something like an Angler or Pyromancer, otherwise you're dead.

[Luca Grease]

Besides you should leave in like 2 Forces, there are some situations in the mirror where you just have to counter something like an Angler or Pyromancer, otherwise you're dead.

See, I really want to side out all of my Gitaxian Probes and Forces in the mirror, and I actually struggle finding 7 boardable cards in the board. I only like keeping a couple of Forces in if I'm playing against a Stifle list, since you need to be able to interact on very low resources, and even then possibly only the draw. But I definitely don't want any on the play against a non-stifle Delver list.

I thank you for your feedback though, it is much appreciated. I can totally see 2 mana being too costly for something that only deals with soft targets such as Delver and DRS. I will keep testing, but more feedback is welcome.

[Agrippa91]

I think 1 Probe isn't the worst to keep in in the mirror when you run them anyways. It's an easy way to get 2 tokens out of a YP with only 3 mana before the opponent can kill him.
Personally I mostly seem to lose the mirror due to resolving less Gurmag Anglers than my opponent. Our removal is so redundant that everything else gets killed super quickly, but the Anglers are really tough to deal with once resolved. Of Course TNNs are even harder, but at least those cost 3 mana and can be easier stopped by Dazes and Pyroblasts.
Forces also help salvaging those Dazes in the lategame which is really nice.

[raikenxy]

Hey everyone,

Sleeved up Grixis Delver for a Duel for Duals tournament this weekend. 32 people, 5 rounds cut to top 8. Won the event and an Unlimited Underground Sea. Deck is pretty great. Went 6-0-2 in matches, double drew into top eight after first three rounds and was the third 3rd seed in the top eight.

List

4 deathrite shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Young Pyromancer
2 True Name
2 Gurmag Angler

4 Force
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
3 Stifle
1 Spell Pierce
1 Dismember
4 Bolt
3 Gitaxian Probe

4 flooded strand
2 misty
2 scalding tarn
3 volcanic
2 underground
1 tropical
4 wasteland

Sideboard

2 ancient grudge
1 dread of night
1 umezawa's jitte
1 sudden demise
1 flusterstorm
2 pyroblast
2 cabal therapy
2 surgical extraction
1 grafdigger's cage
2 diabolic edict

Matches

Burn 2-1 (IN: Jitte, Flusterstorm, 2 Cabal therapy; OUT: 3 Probe, 1 dismember)
Jund 2-0 (In: 2 Edict; Out: 2 Force of Will)
LED Dredge 2-1 (In: 2 Pyroblast, 2 surgical, 1 cage, 1 flusterstorm; Out: 4 Bolt, 1 dismember, 1 Gurmag Angler)***
Enchantress ID
Manaless ID

TOP 8
Manaless 2-1 (In: 2 surgicals, 1 cage, 1 flusterstorm; Out: 3 Bolt, 1 dismember)
UR Delver 2-1 (In: 2 pyroblast, 1 flusterstorm, 1 jitte; Out: 4 Force)
LED Dredge 2-1 (same as round 3)***

*** was tempted to bring in sudden demise against LED dredge to deal with initial zombie hordes if I was able to shut off the graveyard after they exploded for board presence, but ultimately decided against it.

[blablub]

Hey Guys,
i saw this list a couple of times now. https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/779614#online
It looks like this guy has decent results with it and i like this "canadian thresh" style. Someone knows who this is or has experience with the list? is it worth playing/testing?

thanks for your answers :)

[Luca Grease]

Cool list. Not playing True Name Nemesis is wrong, though.

[PhyrexianLibrarian]

Hey Guys,
i saw this list a couple of times now. https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/779614#online
It looks like this guy has decent results with it and i like this "canadian thresh" style. Someone knows who this is or has experience with the list? is it worth playing/testing?

thanks for your answers :)

As much as I love Snapcaster Mage, he's really hard to get away with in this deck, as flashing back a spell at best competes with a more impactful 3-drop like TNN or Kolaghan's Command, and at worst never happens when it's relevant. I'd much rather keep those spells in my yard and use them to cast an Angler or dome my opponent with a DRS/Grim Lavamancer. You also lose the ability to go wide with Young Pyromancer.

I think every list is worth testing, but if you want to utilize Snapcaster effectively I think you have to either run more lands, or fewer Gurmag Anglers, and if you do that you're moving towards a Grixis/Czech Control build anyways.

[TheManWithaPlan]

Hey Guys,
i saw this list a couple of times now. https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/779614#online
It looks like this guy has decent results with it and i like this "canadian thresh" style. Someone knows who this is or has experience with the list? is it worth playing/testing?

thanks for your answers :)

I built and played a list very similar to this one way back in February this year, as I thought that Therapy Grixis Delver was just not good enough in a metagame full of Miracles, Aluren, Food Chain and Czech Pile just starting to catch on. At the time I considered it to be a meta call to play this version of the deck. I played 2 True-Name Nemeses over the 2 Snapcasters, 2 Gitaxian Probes instead of 2 Spell Snares, and the 4th Stifle over the Forked Bolt. The deck felt fine, but a little shaky with a lot of the threats being curve toppers and, thus, a little clunky. I haven't played that version of the deck since the banning of Sensei's Top, and if I feel like I am in the mood to play Stifle, I usually just go to play actual Canadian Threshold, because the deck is just far better tuned than this kind of list, and plays better with Stifle. Not to say that this deck is worse, just that Canadian Threshold is a better home for Stifle.

I do think that this version of Stifle Grixis is worth exploring more, because I think, from experience playing the deck, that this deck is not optimized. My initial idea when building my version of the deck was that since Young Pyromancer played poorly with Stifle, I would remove it from the deck and open up a bit of a hole on my mana curve to accomadate for Stifle, and rely on top end to capitalize on mana advantage and to attack the metagame with difficult to handle threats.

[Luca Grease]

if I feel like I am in the mood to play Stifle, I usually just go to play actual Canadian Threshold, because the deck is just far better tuned than this kind of list, and plays better with Stifle. Not to say that this deck is worse, just that Canadian Threshold is a better home for Stifle.


Whenever I read this argument, all I see is "stifle is an absolute necessity in Canadian threshold since that deck is inexcusably underpowered by today's standards, whereas it is merely an option in grixis delver".

I am a sucker for synergy, but the banning of sensei's divining top removed the last excuse left for playing mongoose in legacy. The premier control deck of the format now runs 4drs and 3/4 baleful strixes.

Also, I've found the lack of sinergy between yp and stifle to be greatly exaggerated: if you can tap out and swarm with pyromancer, just swarm with pyromancer. That's still so good that making your stifles a little worse is a totally acceptable price to pay.

[blablub]

Thanks for your replays, the decision isnt easy i guess :D

general question for all Delverdecks, what do you think is the best way to beat the Pile? Shroud Creatures? Price of Progress? Im not sure how to win against those "4 Baleful Strix 8972323 Removal-Spell 4 Snapcaster" Deck :(

[Nola]

I think that Bob Huang's list, is a better way to beat Czech.decks.

This list plays 2 TNN that really shines against their Strix and removals. 2 Spell Pierces, that can stop easily a flashbacked removal via Snapcaster.

The sideboard also, have great cards like Grim Lavamancer and Izzet Staticaster to deal with their Strix/Snaps and PoP, to punish their greedy manabase.

But in the end, those Czech.decks are a really pain, no matter what you do. Lol.

Best regards from Brazil :)

[blablub]

I think that Bob Huang's list, is a better way to beat Czech.decks.

This list plays 2 TNN that really shines against their Strix and removals. 2 Spell Pierces, that can stop easily a flashbacked removal via Snapcaster.

The sideboard also, have great cards like Grim Lavamancer and Izzet Staticaster to deal with their Strix/Snaps and PoP, to punish their greedy manabase.

But in the end, those Czech.decks are a really pain, no matter what you do. Lol.

Best regards from Brazil :)

Do you have a link to the List? i cant find it, thx

edit: found it, someone knows the exact baording plan of this list against the pile?

[Agrippa91]

Went 5-0 (10-2-1) in a league the other day with my list. I'm posting this because somebody was asking about a stifle build that was more "Canadian".

Creatures (12):
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Gurmag Angler
2 True-Name-Nemesis

Instants/sorceries (30):
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Stifle
2 Spell Pierce
2 Spell Snare
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Fatal Push

Lands (18):
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Wasteland

Sideboard:
1 Pithing Needle
2 Surgical Extraction
4 Thoughtseize
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Hydroblast
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Diabolic Edict
2 Marsh Casualties

Round 1 against r4wk5t4r (BUG Delver):

G1 I keep a hand with 2 wastelands, 2 lands, ponder, stifle and a TNN. I pondered for a pair of bolts since I knew he was on some sort of delver build. I continue drawing all my 4 wastelands and bolt/waste/stifle everything he has which for some reason makes my opponent quite salty.

In: 2 Pyroblast
Out: 2 FoW
I knew from mtgtop8 that he wasn't playing any Bobs or TNNs as Marsh Casualties targets, but Leovold so I thought it might be worth a shot. I realize that Pyroblast is very mediocre in this matchup, but countering a cantrip is fine and pyroblasting TNN/Strix/FoW/Delver is awesome.

G2 I keep a hand of Usea, DRS, Stifle, Ponder, Bolt and 2 Spell Snares. Not optimal, but since he's playing BUG I doubt he plays super heavy mana denial with stifle (I haven't seen hymn either, but Bayou, besides hymn is pretty standard). Keeping open Spell Snare + Stifle on t1 should I draw a land seems good.
My opponent lands a delver off an usea which I'm ok with, at least it's not a DRS. I draw a FoW and ponder. Reason being that my shaman can easily get killed and I don't want to FoW a removal spell. I cast a ponder, hoping to look innocently enough that my opponent doesn't counter it. He dazes it though and I force back, find another land, push and delver. My opponent has wasteland which explains his aggressive daze on my ponder though I'd argue he would've been in a worse spot had I played a daze myself because his t2 wasteland wouldn't have had any target.
My opponent keeps wastelanding me while staying on Usea only himself, but I manage to draw a usea, play a shaman, stifle his second fetch and he continues drawing nonlands. He concedes and reveals a hand of 2 hymn, 1 golgari charm, goyf and more.

Round 2 against Cwoj (Grixis Delver):
G1 I have a pretty nutty starting hand in Delver, 2 lands, 2 wastelands, daze and brainstorm. I play delver and pass. Interestingly enough my opponent probes me, then proceeds to fetch for usea and plays deathrite. This signals that he has daze so I don't daze even though I have no removal for DRS. I figure that Daze will be live enough the following turns due to my 2 wastelands. I brainstorm in my upkeep (something I normally don't do) to flip my delver. Note that since I'm the initiator I'll win any daze-war here. I get to reveal a fatal push and kill his DRS. My opponent doesn't daze, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have it since he's aware of my own daze.
My opponent plays a delver into my daze with usea and volcanic out, but I don't take the daze-bait since he's at 11 already due to his Gitaxian probes with me being at 20. Besides I still think he has a daze and my 2 Useas are tapped.
I waste his volcanic the next turn and hold up stifle and daze with 2 mana, rendering his daze useless. My opponent doesn't recoup and I win with Delver.

Out: 4 FoW, 2 Spell Snare
In: Pyroblast, REB, Hydroblast, Edict, 2 Marsh Casualties

G2 my opponent lands a t1 delver which I REB, we proceed to trade removal spells. He loses because he sets himself 2 cards behind by forcing a 2 lightning bolts, one of which I Spell Pierce. I really went away from FoWs in this matchup, a better way than forcing the angler seems to pyroblast/spell pierce the cantrips that find his threats in the first place.

Round 3 against g0ld_rook (Doomsday):
G1 I mulligan to 6 because of no lands and keep a mediocre hand with 2 useas, stifle, fatal push, ponder and TNN, topping a DRS. My opponent leads with Tundra which leads me to believe he's Miracles or Stoneblade. He proceeds with a fetch and I'm able to stifle the obvious fetch after his eot brainstorm. He lands a Usea and proceeds to go off through Spell Pierce with 2 Dark Rituals, 2 LEDs and Burning Wish for Tendrils.

Out: 4 Bolt, 2 Fatal Push, 2 TNN
In: 4 Thoughtseize, 2 Marsh Casualties, Hydroblast, 1 Surgical
I didn't really know what to expect and thought about Empty the Warrens out of the wishboard, hence the Marsh Casualties.

G2 I keep a bit of a slower hand with 2 fetches, 2 brainstorms, ponder, marsh casualties and surgical extraction. I know he isn't the quickest of storm decks and that if he were to go for a quick empty I'd have the answer so I kept. I ponder, find daze and FoW and daze his t1 duress off basic swamp. Knowing that he's not really a PiF deck I surgical duress on his draw step and he reveals burning wish, cabal therapy, dark ritual, doomsday, LED, preordain and usea. I was hoping he hasn't drawn another discard spell besides duress but he has the therapy. More importantly he's very close to go off.
In his library he reveals 3 Monastery Mentor which explain the white splash and looked pretty scary. I also note he has no storm cards in the mainboard.
He preordains, tops and bottoms and passes the turn.
I brainstorm into double spell-pierce on my turn and shuffle away a land and the marsh casualties which has been confirmed garbage. Leaving one mana up it makes me feel a bit better, but I still lack a clock. Thankfully I draw a delver for the next turn and pierce a ponder on my opp's turn since I figured that if he found a land my pierces would be pretty useless anyways.
I brainstorm eot because I'm still pretty tight on mana and want to keep open spell pierce, finding a thoughtseize, stifle and misty.
After I cast the hand disruption that I revealed to delver on my next turn I see Probe, Burning Wish, Dark Ritual, LED, Therapy, Doomsday and Monastery Mentor.
Though the hand looks super scary I have to take the mentor because my clock is garbage and I have no removal left in my deck.
I ponder though it's my "blue card" for FoW, figuring that I need to set up my next draw steps which would've consisted of drs and 2 lands. I shuffle and draw Marsh Casualties again. Ugh.
He draws a Volcanic, wishes for a second cabal therapy and takes the spell pierce, leaving me with FoW, Stifle and Casualties.
I draw a second stifle and force his therapy next turn, leaving the card I just drew a mystery. He goes for it and I stifle the storm trigger of Tendrils.

Well, that was a close one. Now that I got a look at his deck though due to surgical I can board correctly:
+2 Pyroblast
-2 Marsh Casualties
In hindsight I should've kept in 2 bolts instead of the 2 anglers because bolt or bolt+drs in response to doomsday is lethal when he's 10 or below. I just figured that he'd board out the mentors now I've seen them. I thought about lab-man, but most of the time they have an instant-way to draw cards which makes removal useless unless you have 2 of them.

I start mulliganing a nonland-hand (well, wasteland) into a mediocre drs, 2 bs, wasteland, usea and fetch, bottoming an angler. My opponent mulls to 5 though so I feel quire confident.
He leads with fetch and I draw a stifle, deciding to keep open a land and pass the turn. Not what I'd always do, but the fear of cabal therapy for my brainstorms and the fact that I also have wasteland help me making this decision.
He proceeds to fetch after fetch which isn't the best for me, but I rip delver, thoughtseize and another stifle off a brainstorm.
Next turn I take his brainstorm and leave him with a lonely dark-ritual, burning wish and usea.
My next brainstorm reveals thoughtseize and surgical so I discard his wish and surgical it. I see no other win condition left in his deck besides lab man, as I suspected he boarded out the mentors.
The next turn he's able to fire off his 1-of act on impulse, he even gets a lab man, but I pyroblast it and he concedes.

Round 4 against Bryant Cook (TES):
Bryant might be the best TES player out there, but at least I know which hands I have to mulligan when playing against him. That said I would've mulliganed my no-lander anyways. My second hand with Usea, fetch, waste, stifle, FoW and brainstorm looks better.
The rest of the game was pretty textbook: I stifled a delta after he brainstormed t2 off island. The next turn he probes me, then plays usea and dark rit. Knowing I can waste him next turn I FoW the ritual, leaving him with a lonely island, flipping with a very feel-good daze.
He goes off on his last possible round with chrome mox and badlands. I exile his first rite of flame in response to the second and daze his burning wish which prompts a concession.

Out: 4 Bolt, 2 Push, 2 TNN, 1 Angler
In: 4 Thoughtseize, 2 Marsh Casualties, 2 Surgical, 1 Hydroblast

I know that TES isn't gy-based, I like the surgical for the same reason I liked them vs. Doomsday though: I have so many counters that halfing his discard spells (duress, cabal therapy) is decent, besides I can get doubles I know off from thoughtseize, tutors or worst-case look at his hand instantly to see whether I have to FoW a ritual or wait for the tutor because he has no discard.

G2 I keep a hand with delver, cantrips, surgical and a daze which gets taken t1 via duress. I draw a FoW and surgical his duresses to determine whether I have to dig for additional disruption or can play the delver. Cabal Therapy, Infernal Tutor, LED and 2 Petals tell me that FoW might not be enough next turn, so I leave open mana for an emergency brainstorm should he go for it and name FoW.
Bryant just plays a second land and plays therapy. I don't hide FoW it because I figured he'd rather name a card he knew I had, besides hiding FoW and then dying is pretty stupid. This way even if he named FoW I'd still have a shot at finding a FOW with brainstorm. He simply takes a brainstorm though, probably biting his tongue as he sees the FoW I drew.
I draw a land and am dead to Empty next turn due to another cabal therapy. I even had 2 "delver-scries" to find me a cantrip or marsh casualties but it didn't work out.

G3 I keep a weird hand with only 1 land (volcanic) as well as brainstorm, ponder, hydroblast, stifle, spell pierce and an uncastable thoughtseize.
Figuring I'd brainstorm EOT I passed the turn, not pondering in fear of a t1 ETW.
Bryant plays a fetch, I brainstorm eot and he cracks in response, glad to get a basic swamp. Sadly my brainstorm isn't any good in that it doesn't have any lands, only daze, a nother stifle and angler. I take the daze and stifle, but don't ponder. I figured that my opponent would need a bunch of discard to get through this so I could wait a turn to maximize my chances of hitting a land with ponder because if I don't I have my shields down and the game is likely lost.
Fortunately Bryant doesn't have a second land either and passes, my ponder next turn shows a misty (haleluja!), marsh casualties and brainstorm. I get the fetch, keeping the casualties on top in case my opponent goes for an empty. Sadly he plays Dark Ritual next turn and I feel oblieged to spell pierce it, forcing me to fetch away my answer to empty.
Somewhere in the early game I had to shuffle away my thoughtseize, so all that was left as I played my Angler was daze, hydroblast and 2 stifle.
I draw double delver and put my opponent down to 8 as he duresses my hydroblast and wishes for infernal tutor.
His 4 land and artifact mana render my daze useless as he proceeds to go for an ad nauseam at 8 life, revealing a bunch of rituals, petals and brainstorms. He eventually brainstorms into therapy and empty for 28 goblins and passes the turn on 2 life against 2 unflipped delver.
Because magic is all about skill I blindflip my 2 delvers with a brainstorm and win the game.

Round 5 against funkydude787 (UR Delver):
UR Delver is probably one of the harder matchups for traditional Grixis: They have 8 bolts and PoP and are just tuned to beat other delver decks. Our only trump is Gurmag Angler which proves to be quite a headache for them.

G1 otd I force a swiftspear because I have no removal in hand, but get dazed. I play a deathrite and defend from his bolt by a daze of my own, but my opponent forces and puts me to 14. With usea out and brainstorm, angler, wasteland and daze in hand I pass the turn and am able to daze a stormchaser mage, brainstorm for a bolt and kill his swiftspear before he bolts me to 9 on his turn with chain lightning. I play an angler and a delver and quickly turn the tides.
I land another delver and a drs, thankfully my opponent is blanking out and bolts my drs instead of me at 6 life after his stormchaser attack. I instinctively play my misty out to be able to "scry" with my delvers, figuring a PoP would kill us both since my opp was at 4 life with 2 Volcs out and in topdeck mode. I didn't realize though that by being at 6 life (5 after stormchaser attacks) I left him the out to a draw with PoP.
Long story short he drew it the next turn and we finished an undecided g1.

Out: 4 Stifle
In: 2 Pyroblast, 1 Hydroblast, 1 Diabolic Edict
Stifle is cute, but not necessary against this deck. All I really want to do is kill all their stuff and land an Angler or TNN.
I do so the next 2 games and win each of them in quick succession.

I really like this deck and think it's a great take on the metagame.
The thoughtseizes in the sideboard are great against combo. Flusterstorms just play right into counter-hate like Xantid Swarm, Defense Grid, discard spells, hay-makers like Blood Moon and Mentor etc.
Hydroblast is fantastic in some matchups, especially some hard ones like moon-stompy, UR Delver, Burn etc.
The lack of probes and young tempo-negative-mancer really helps in the tempo matchups.
My favorite sideboard card is still Marsh Casualties which I can play due to the heavier black splash. This deck is just nuts and provides an out to Empty, resolved TNN and active Mom which Grixis traditionally just doesn't have at 2 mana.
Everyone knows how good Spell Pierce is, but Spell Snare really continues to impress me as it provides an answer to many 2-for-1s Grixis can struggle with, namely Strix, Snapcaster, Hymn, Stoneforge, Jitte and more. Moreover the Spell Snares/Pierces are great against all the cards people bring in to kill TNN and Angler, most of which cost 2-3 mana.
I can't say I missed the threats, TNN and Angler are very hard to deal with and require different answers which not every deck has.

[Agrippa91]

Played in a league yesterday. Whereas in the league above I faced delver and combo, midrange was the name of the program that day. I lost to (soothsaying) Miracles by making 2 misplays while keeping a removal-heavy hand g1 and won against UWR Stoneblade, Grixis Pyromancer (3 Angler build), Noble Duke and 4c-control. My 1-mana counterspells really pulled their weight in those matches, stifle denied the mana while snare and pierce prevented the important 2-for-1s from happening.

[eldub]

Agrippa,

Appreciate the detail and your take on an aggressively tempo oriented build. I play something very similar in BUG colors (posts in BURg tempo recently). Almost the exact same threats and stack interaction (+1 Leovold / -1 Snare) and obviously a different removal suite (Push/dismember/decay).

I moved to this build to combat the 4c Pile decks and Eldrazi and I’ve had good results lately.

Keep us up to date on your progress.

[scapiander]

Any maindeck construction tips for a meta littered with G/W, DnT, Lands, and Czech Pile?
For example how the following cards line up against this grindy meta:

Young Pyro
Stifle vs. Cabal (or none mainboard)
Kolaghan's command (main/board)
Spell pieres and Spell Snares?

[Agrippa91]

What does G/W stand for? Your meta seems fair, I'd definitely recommend 2 TNN.
As for stifle vs. therapy: Stifle is like waaaaay better against 4c-control and lands, but is barely worth it against D&T. Therapy is quite embarassing against lands though as well as against 4c-control unlike you get lucky draws. Knowing what to name because of Stoneforge and Recruiter is awesome though.

[scapiander]

What does G/W stand for? Your meta seems fair, I'd definitely recommend 2 TNN.
As for stifle vs. therapy: Stifle is like waaaaay better against 4c-control and lands, but is barely worth it against D&T. Therapy is quite embarassing against lands though as well as against 4c-control unlike you get lucky draws. Knowing what to name because of Stoneforge and Recruiter is awesome though.

Hey thanks for the reply.
I meant G/W to stand for Maverick/midrange decks that don't play blue.

Do you think there is an argument to play therapy-less/stifle-less build in this fair meta?

[Qweerios]

Hey thanks for the reply.
I meant G/W to stand for Maverick/midrange decks that don't play blue.

Do you think there is an argument to play therapy-less/stifle-less build in this fair meta?

Yes, completely.

I would play Push and KCommand main instead and have Therapy in the SB for combo decks. Favor a high threat count with TNN and Gurmag main and pack additional KCommand/Grudge in your SB. A Jitte SB will go a long way too.

[AdventuresWithTarmo]

Top 4'Ed Eternal weekend, Bob's list is the truth

[potatodavid]

Top 4'Ed Eternal weekend, Bob's list is the truth

Neat!

[anjo]

Top 4'Ed Eternal weekend, Bob's list is the truth

What did you play against during EW?

[Sturtzilla]

Greetings,

I judged over the weekend at EW and got to check out a lot of cool takes on Grixis Delver. Notably, I got to be the camera/stream judge for the Vintage Top 8 and the quarterfinals of the Legacy Top 8. I ended up settling on playing Brian Coval's Top 8 list (taking the liberty to run a 2-2-2-2 fetchland split and modified the sideboard for my metagame) as it was reasonably similar to what I had been running prior to EW. Check his list and the other Top 8 lists here:

http://www.cardtitan.com/coverage2

4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Young Pyromancer
2 Snapcaster Mage
2 True-Name Nemesis
1 Tombstalker
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Cabal Therapy
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
2 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
4 Wasteland

Sideboard
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Pithing Needle
2 Flusterstorm
1 Electrickery
1 Grim Lavamancer
2 Pyroblast
1 Ancient Grudge
2 Diabolic Edict
1 Kolaghan's Command

Round 1: Stasis [2-0] - My deck played better cards. I FoW Stasis in G1 and kill him. G2 he Boomerangs a couple of my creatures to buy time, a Young Pyromancer follows up and gets him.

Round 2: BUG Foodchain [2-1] - He manages to get the combo off in G1. G2 I kill most of his threats and keep Food Chain off the table. G3 we both start on a Deathrite. Opponent kills mine. I Pithing Needle Deathrite and double Wasteland him on turn 3. He stumbles on mana for a few turns while, I get an army of elementals and take his hand apart with Cabal Therapy

Round 3: RG Lands [0-2] - Opponent has the natural combo in opener both games... didn't get sideboard cards in G2.

Round 4: RG Lands [2-1] - Opponent has the combo in opener. G2 and G3 I manage to Pithing Needle Thespian's Stage to slow the opponent down. I am able to get there using True-Name Nemesis in G2 and then a Young Pyromancer does the trick in G3.

The deck feels very good. I think that it is just a matter of tuning the sideboard for what you expect to be playing against. I have my board tuned to help mainly fight fair and lands match up. It seems to be working reasonably well. Thanks for reading!

[Agrippa91]

I hope you didn't sideboard pithing needle for food chain but for walking ballista

[Sturtzilla]

I hope you didn't sideboard pithing needle for food chain but for walking ballista

LOL. As both a seasoned legacy player and level two judge, I am well aware of the limitations of Pithing Needle. I have played this opponent a number of times in the past and know that his list only uses Walking Ballista as the mana sink and win con for the combo. Knowing this, naming Walking Ballista shuts off the instant kill, forcing him to attack. With a Pyromancer or TNN, Ballista can be blocked for a good while. This play also serves as decent protection for our threats from an early Ballista with 1-2 counters.

However, the way the game developed, I noticed my opponent missed his third land drop after spending his third turn to Ponder, shuffle, and then Decay my Shaman. So my turn three was to play a second Wasteland, Pithing Needle Shaman, and then double Wasteland him off of lands. So he was left with no lands and a needled DRS to my USea and more lands in hand. I was able to follow up with a Pyromancer and Probe. I was able to Therapy him the following turn for 2 FoWs and 2 Ballistas. He missed on lands for a few turns and I had stripped four cards from his hand while making dudes. By the time he found lands he was too far behind.

[Dutch253]

Has Stifle fallen out of favor in the deck? I’m going to give it a try for the first time this weekend.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Sturtzilla]

Has Stifle fallen out of favor in the deck? I’m going to give it a try for the first time this weekend. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Of the 5 delver variants that made the Top 8 of EW, only the RUG Delver list ran Stifle. The winning deck was a BUG Delver list with more of a control slant. The three Grixis delver lists all varied in their spell flex slots... these slots included 1 Forked Bolt and 2 Spell Pierce in Bob Huang and Luke Blum's lists and 2 Cabal Therapy in Brian Coval's list. So running Stifle certainly gives the deck a useful tool and angle of attack; however, it would appear that a number of highly skilled Grixis Delver players all unanimously decided that Stifle was not where they wanted to be. Just my thoughts on the matter.

[blablub]

Sorry for the "spamish" post but some knows the exact list of Dylan Donagan? i know he wrote on article on it on SCG but, on stream he has a Lili last Hope in the Maindeck and the commentators said there are 3 Pierces in the deck, what did he cut for that?

[Agrippa91]

Dylan Donegan doesn't play Pyromancer (you see that in his sb he doesn't play therapy but thoughtseize). That means he also doesn't have probe. He played more Anglers, Thought Scours and at least 2 Stifles. Not sure where they say he has Spell Pierces, I find it hard to believe he would find room for 3 in his maindeck.

[scapiander]

has there a been a good sideboard strategy against Czech Pile posted?

[Luca Grease]

has there a been a good sideboard strategy against Czech Pile posted?

Yes. Side out your Fows and Probes, bring in additional burn, blast effects, and Flusterstorms. Try to always have an answer for a t1 Deathrite Shaman and play the denial/tempo game. The stifle list is obviously best equipped for that, but I guess Huang's also has game with the additional Pierce and YP. If they do manage to develop their mana, remember that TNN, Angler, and a swarm of elemental tokens are all somewhat problematic for them to answer, so you can sometimes ride one of your more resilient threats + burn spells to victory even against significant card disadvantage. This match up feels even to and slightly favorable with a Stifle build, but I suppose it can be rough for lists that don't attack one of the deck's softest spots (the manabase) as heavily. Alternatively, since most Czech Pile lists are currently playing a very low number of Abrupt Decay in their 75, you could try attacking them with sideboard enchantments that exploit their deck's other major weakness: their slow and unimpressive clock. Bitterblossom and Sulfuric Vortex come to mind.

[Griselpuff]

Czech Pile is a close match-up. I would never side out Probe, except maybe vs Chalice/Burn decks. The card is fundamentally broken and helps you navigate games.

My sb plan is -4 FOW +1 Staticaster +1 Price +2 Pyroblast

Depending on what I see I may bring in Abrade or Edict for some Daze/Pierce

Also, pretty stoked to have top 8ed a bunch of events with this deck. Yesterday was great as I had one friend in the Top 8 and two friends in the Top 32 all using my list.

[blablub]

Bob are you willing to share some more SB-plans for the common MatchUps? would be really appreciated :)
by the way congrats on your success recently :)

[AdventuresWithTarmo]

I was wondering the same thing about the pile MU.

I side out 4 force and 2 probes for 2 fluster, 1 lavamancer, 1 dismember, and 2 pyroblast.

But I hear what you're saying about probe. Its just nice having the fluster for the long game against sweepers and other removal. Any recommendations? Like maybe just not bringing in the dismember at all? Only 1 fluster?

[CptHaddock]

Czech Pile is a close match-up. I would never side out Probe, except maybe vs Chalice/Burn decks. The card is fundamentally broken and helps you navigate games.

My sb plan is -4 FOW +1 Staticaster +1 Price +2 Pyroblast

Depending on what I see I may bring in Abrade or Edict for some Daze/Pierce

Also, pretty stoked to have top 8ed a bunch of events with this deck. Yesterday was great as I had one friend in the Top 8 and two friends in the Top 32 all using my list.

Hey Bob can you commentate on your lack of stifles in your list? I know that you have been a big fan of that card in the past.

[Dutch253]

Played the deck for the first time last night...went 0-4! Still had fun though.

Round 1: Nic Fit. He just shredded my hand and I couldn't counter all his threats or kill him quickly enough. Game 1 he actually killed my with Scapeshift but my hand was empty so I couldn't stop it
In: 1x Price of Progress, 2x Diabolic Edict but never saw them and he beat me down with a Primeval Titan.

Round 2: Eldrazi, all big stuff though- Ulamog, Endbringer, Thran Dynamo etc. Again once my hand was empty from stopping Chalices and Trinispheres he just slammed monstrous threats on the table.
In: 1x Price of Progress, 2x Ancient Grudge, 2x Diabolic Edict. Saw a few SB cards but couldn't stop all his top decked threats.

Round 3: UWr Helm. He actually told me after the match that he built the deck specifically to beat Grixis Delver sooooooo yeah.
In: 2x Pyroblast, 1x Pithing Needle. Pyroblast is my only answer to his Energy Field and I just could not find them in my post board games.

Round 4: Stoneblade. This was my only "real" match that I felt I got to play Magic. All the games were long and grindy, just how I like them.
In: 2x Pyroblast, 1x Pithing Needle, 1x Izzet Static Caster, 2x Ancient Grudge.

A lot of the games I was siding out Daze even though I was on the play, I'm sure that probably wasn't correct but I felt like the SB cards I was bringing in were so much higher impact. This is my first time playing a Delver deck so I know I have lots of room for improvement. Any tips or constructive criticism would be great!

Here's the 75 that I played (Mr. Huang's list):
Land:
2 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland

Creatures:
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Gurmag Angler
2 True-Name Nemesis
3 Young Pyromancer

Instants and Sorceries:
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
1 Forked Bolt
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Ponder
2 Spell Pierce

Sideboard:
2 Ancient Grudge
3 Cabal Therapy
2 Diabolic Edict
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Izzet Staticaster
1 Pithing Needle
1 Price of Progress
2 Pyroblast
2 Surgical Extraction

[theMonster]

Hey, y’all. I’ve been testing some Grixis lists sans Pyromancer and was hoping for feedback. My main question concerns Stifle in the current meta. I’ve been very streaky with the card. Sometimes it enables free wins, but it’s often tough to take people off of mana with all the Deathrites running around. But since I’m testing lists without Pyromancer, perhaps I need to be more tempo-oriented and include it in lieu of a proper 2-drop. I’d love feedback on my current list, which is kind of a mix between Ben Friedman’s old 4C list from over a year ago and Dylan Donegan’s latest idea:

4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Snapcaster Mage
1 True-Name Nemesis
2 Gurmag Angler

1 Liliana, the Last Hope

4 Lightning Bolt
1 Forked Bolt
1 Dismember

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Stifle
2 Spell Pierce
4 Daze
4 Force of Will

3 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
2 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Polluted Delta
4 Wasteland

// sideboard //

2 Surgical Extraction
1 Pithing Needle
1 Flusterstorm
2 Thoughtseize
1 Duress
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Abrade
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Marsh Casualties
1 Arc Trail
1 True-Name Nemesis

The idea is to have both the tempo/mana denial plan and the ability to grind with threats and flashbacked removal. Lili has been terrific, buying back Snapcasters and my other threats. Snap + Stifle has done some work, too. I’d love to find room for a Spell Snare because that card seems powerful right now, but I’m not sure what the cut is. The Snapcasters open up the “burn ‘em out” plan, which has definitely won me games. The sideboard needs refinement, of course. I’m testing a bunch of things, hence the multitude of singletons. All that said, four 3-drops maindeck (and a fifth in the board) might be sketchy for a Delver deck. I’d love some input on a list like this. Over the past couple weeks, it’s done some nice things, but the sample size is small.

Regarding some quirky card choices: the 2/1 TS/Duress split is because I virtually never bring in more than two Thoughtseizes in fair matchups, so Duress is a card that doesn’t lose me life against Storm or Burn. Arc Trail is sort of a pet card, but it’s done zany things like kill Deathrite + Strix, Delver + Pyromancer, Thalia + Mirran Crusader, etc. There’s a good chance that it’s an incorrect choice, but I’ve liked its ability to kill 2-toughness dudes.

If I were to cut Stifles and play a more grindy version, what do you think of a maindeck of -3 Stifle/+1 Spell Snare, +1 Abrade, +1 Preordain? That would free up a sideboard slot, too.

I’m open to any and all criticism. Thanks a lot!

[Dutch253]

Played the deck for the first time last night...went 0-4! Still had fun though.

Round 1: Nic Fit. He just shredded my hand and I couldn't counter all his threats or kill him quickly enough. Game 1 he actually killed my with Scapeshift but my hand was empty so I couldn't stop it
In: 1x Price of Progress, 2x Diabolic Edict but never saw them and he beat me down with a Primeval Titan.

Round 2: Eldrazi, all big stuff though- Ulamog, Endbringer, Thran Dynamo etc. Again once my hand was empty from stopping Chalices and Trinispheres he just slammed monstrous threats on the table.
In: 1x Price of Progress, 2x Ancient Grudge, 2x Diabolic Edict. Saw a few SB cards but couldn't stop all his top decked threats.

Round 3: UWr Helm. He actually told me after the match that he built the deck specifically to beat Grixis Delver sooooooo yeah.
In: 2x Pyroblast, 1x Pithing Needle. Pyroblast is my only answer to his Energy Field and I just could not find them in my post board games.

Round 4: Stoneblade. This was my only "real" match that I felt I got to play Magic. All the games were long and grindy, just how I like them.
In: 2x Pyroblast, 1x Pithing Needle, 1x Izzet Static Caster, 2x Ancient Grudge.

A lot of the games I was siding out Daze even though I was on the play, I'm sure that probably wasn't correct but I felt like the SB cards I was bringing in were so much higher impact. This is my first time playing a Delver deck so I know I have lots of room for improvement. Any tips or constructive criticism would be great!

Here's the 75 that I played (Mr. Huang's list):
Land:
2 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland

Creatures:
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Gurmag Angler
2 True-Name Nemesis
3 Young Pyromancer

Instants and Sorceries:
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
1 Forked Bolt
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Ponder
2 Spell Pierce

Sideboard:
2 Ancient Grudge
3 Cabal Therapy
2 Diabolic Edict
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Izzet Staticaster
1 Pithing Needle
1 Price of Progress
2 Pyroblast
2 Surgical Extraction

Is this thing on?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Stevestamopz]

Is this thing on?

Did you have any questions or anything to discuss? Your report can be summed up as "I played bad matchups and lost with a stock list."

If you want advice, play Tombstalkers over Anglers.

[Dutch253]

Did you have any questions or anything to discuss? Your report can be summed up as "I played bad matchups and lost with a stock list."

If you want advice, play Tombstalkers over Anglers.

When I said "any tips or constructive criticism would be great!" I figured that implied I was looking for advice ;) I was just hoping for some insight on how to better play the match ups. I mean if they're just terrible matchups I can live with that. But if there is something I could focus on to improve them that would be sweet too.

[Plague Sliver]

If you want advice, play Tombstalkers over Anglers.

I'd love to take a look at your current list -- or at least, a list that you'd play at a large event (80+ players).

I'll be attending one of these big tournaments soon, and am always looking for inspiration.

[Stevestamopz]

I'd love to take a look at your current list -- or at least, a list that you'd play at a large event (80+ players).

I'll be attending one of these big tournaments soon, and am always looking for inspiration.

Ask and you shall receive.

Team Australia.

//Creature (12)
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Tombstalker
2 True-Name Nemesis

//Instant (25)
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
1 Dismember
1 Fatal Push
4 Force of Will
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Spell Pierce
1 Spell Snare
4 Stifle

//Sorcery (4)
4 Ponder

//Land (19)
1 Badlands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland

SB: 2 Abrade
SB: 1 Flusterstorm
SB: 1 Grafdigger's Cage
SB: 1 Kolaghan's Command
SB: 1 Liliana, the Last Hope
SB: 2 Pyroblast
SB: 2 Snapcaster Mage
SB: 2 Surgical Extraction
SB: 3 Thoughtseize


Things I'm not sure on:

- Should the Dismember be the 2nd Push? Pros and cons to each. I've tested both variations and have enjoyed the pros and cons of each.

- Should the Grafdigger's Cage in the sideboard be Crypt/Nihil Spellbomb? Cage is a much harder lock but is not useful against Loam strategies which seem to be everywhere for me right now. The non-bo with Snapcaster is something that has come up a fair bit recently.

- Is there too much emphasis in the sideboard on grinding? Between Snapcasters, K.Command and Lili Last Hope you're bumping up the cmc a fair bit. That said, they are insane and soon there should be footage up of me annihilating DnT in two not close games because I drew those cards.

- Following on from the last point, is it worth it to cut a Snapcaster for a Marsh Casualties/Make Obsolete type sweeper? I tried Izzet Staticaster but it was no bueno. Thanks to Abrade, K.Command and Lili you have a lot of removal postboard so do you need a sweeper? I guess it depends on how much Elves you expect to see and whether you want a clean answer to a resolved Empty the Warrens.

This was from the last tournament I played Team Aus in. I lost the mirror in the semis but you can see two different approaches between our sideboards for inspiration <3: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=17216&f=LE

[Plague Sliver]

Ask and you shall receive.

Team Australia.

//Creature (12)
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Tombstalker
2 True-Name Nemesis

//Instant (25)
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
1 Dismember
1 Fatal Push
4 Force of Will
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Spell Pierce
1 Spell Snare
4 Stifle

//Sorcery (4)
4 Ponder

//Land (19)
1 Badlands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland

SB: 2 Abrade
SB: 1 Flusterstorm
SB: 1 Grafdigger's Cage
SB: 1 Kolaghan's Command
SB: 1 Liliana, the Last Hope
SB: 2 Pyroblast
SB: 2 Snapcaster Mage
SB: 2 Surgical Extraction
SB: 3 Thoughtseize


This is a really sweet list. Love it. I just can't get behind Spell Snare, though. I know it's supposed to be good, I just can't get it to work for me.

At the risk of doing outrageous things, I'm tempted to play your main with

-1 Stifle
-1 Fatal Push
-1 Spell Snare

+3 Gitaxian Probe

I just can't live without Probe anymore. Free info and delve, man.



- Should the Dismember be the 2nd Push? Pros and cons to each. I've tested both variations and have enjoyed the pros and cons of each.


Can't go wrong with either. I'd keep the Dismember for the Suicide Black / Snuff Out old-school-Team-America feels.



- Should the Grafdigger's Cage in the sideboard be Crypt/Nihil Spellbomb? Cage is a much harder lock but is not useful against Loam strategies which seem to be everywhere for me right now. The non-bo with Snapcaster is something that has come up a fair bit recently.


Just play a third Surgical.



- Is there too much emphasis in the sideboard on grinding? Between Snapcasters, K.Command and Lili Last Hope you're bumping up the cmc a fair bit. That said, they are insane and soon there should be footage up of me annihilating DnT in two not close games because I drew those cards.


Yeah, I think the grind is getting out of hand. I don't like Snapcasters in this deck at all, but that's personal preference. FWIW, I enjoyed your buddy's sideboard more :)



- Following on from the last point, is it worth it to cut a Snapcaster for a Marsh Casualties/Make Obsolete type sweeper? I tried Izzet Staticaster but it was no bueno. Thanks to Abrade, K.Command and Lili you have a lot of removal postboard so do you need a sweeper? I guess it depends on how much Elves you expect to see and whether you want a clean answer to a resolved Empty the Warrens.


I'd play -1 Thoughtseize, +1 Marsh Casualties. Not sure when you need to bring in 3x Thoughtseize. And did you give up on running Hymns?

And how's the matchup vs. Czech Pile?

[theMonster]

Ask and you shall receive.
//Land (19)
1 Badlands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland
[/url]

Just curious about how you've liked the mana base, @Stevestamopz. I've tested the same one a fair bit, and the Badlands has burned me way more often than I'd like. As the third land, it can be great to ensure that you can't be Wasteland-ed off of any color. But in a deck that likes to hold up blue for Stifle, it just felt too sketchy too often for me. My deck also became worse at mulligan-ing. You have more reps with this configuration, though, so I defer to you. But what about a 4 Sea/2 Volc/1 Trop mana base? Several of the 18-land, quad-Angler builds play(ed) only 2 Volcs, so perhaps that's feasible here, too. Thoughts?

Thanks!

[Stevestamopz]

@Plague-O

- I was playing Civic on modo last night, and while I hamfisted every turn and subsequently lost, playing with probe was disgusting. I even thought about how I would squeeze it into Team Aus. If I were to play 3 Probes, I would shave 1 sea, 1 pierce and probably a stifle but this is all theory crafting.

- Dismember being able to cleanly answer Angler is the main reason to play it. It's also good against Eldrazi I suppose but this deck is already pretty good against Eldrazi anyway.

- I always like to have 1 dedicated card for Ichorid and Surgical is fairly bad against Dredge. Surgical is also much worse against ANT and very rarely does anything against them where Cage and Spellbomb have useful interactions in their own ways. On the same side of the coin, Spellbomb vs Surgical against Loam Strategies is great as a way to just set them back on Tempo. I'll be testing Spellbomb over Cage for the next little while. I'm especially interested in testing Spellbomb against Pile.

- On that topic, Pile is a horrendous matchup. Like, seriously dismal. Lili Last Hope + K.Command are really the only ways to keep up in the games where you can't Sinkhole them to pieces.

- Hymns were awful in this deck :( I really wanted to like it because it made me feel like Dan Signorini throwing Wolf-Hymns at people and casting Tombstalker but Dan wins games and I was doing a great job of losing. The 3 Thoughtseizes are great against Combo (duh) and also against DnT. I could see having Marsh over the 3rd Thoughtseize.


@TheMonstah

I hate that Badlands is in my Daze/Stifle deck but it has continued to impress me. Whether it's just mana-fixing or letting me play through Choke (which has happened), Badlands has worked a treat. I know L10 here on the source has liked it, and the people locally who have picked up Team Aus have also really liked Badlands and have considered putting one into their normal Grixis Delver lists. Obviously it can suck sometimes but I think the reward outweighs the risk.

[Sturtzilla]

Greetings,

After reasonable success with Coval's list two weeks ago, I decided to try running it again this week, again with a few minor modifications (taking the liberty to run a 2-2-2-2 fetchland split and modified the sideboard for my metagame).


4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Young Pyromancer
2 Snapcaster Mage
2 True-Name Nemesis
1 Tombstalker
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Cabal Therapy
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
2 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest
3 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
4 Wasteland

Sideboard
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Pithing Needle
2 Flusterstorm
1 Electrickery
1 Grim Lavamancer
2 Pyroblast
1 Ancient Grudge
2 Diabolic Edict
1 Kolaghan's Command

Round 1: ANT [2-1] - Opponent manages to go off in G1 and kill me. In hindsight, I likely misplayed. If I had sequenced differently the turn before I had died, I could have fired off a Cabal Therapy that I drew off of a Ponder that shuffled. This could have bought me another turn or two. Additionally, I could have Dazed a Rain of Filth forcing my opponent to go Ad Nauseam route rather than Past in Flames. This is pretty narrow, but could have won G1. I played much tighter in G2 and G3 finishing my opponent quickly and disrupting him with Therapy and counters.

Round 2: UWr Miracles [2-0] - These games were both pretty close. G1 I managed to not allow my opponent any 2-for-1s with Terminus. In G2 a well placed Kolaghan's Command killed a Monastery Mentor in response to its first prowess trigger and also forced a painful discard on my opponent. This kept the board nearly clear and gave us the time to win between a TNN and a Deathrite.

Round 3: Colorless Eldrazi [2-0] - I am on the play in G1 and have Delver into Delver plus Ponder. They transform and dispatch him quickly. G2 I have two Wastelands in the opener and draw into a third, which screws up his mana long enough for the team to assemble and kill him. This game was pretty interesting as he did resolve a Thorn of Amethyst, which I left in play favoring the destruction of a Walking Ballista (for 1) with an Ancient Grudge. This allowed a clear board so an Edict could remove a Reality Smasher that I knew he had in hand, but never got the mana to cast.

Round 4: Goblin Charbelcer [2-0] - I have FoW and Blue card G1. In G2 I have DRS and 2 FoW and 2 blue cards to pitch. He fights through the 2 FoWs and resolves a mid-game Belcher without the mana to activate it. He also only has a Lotus Petal in play after resolving the Belcher, as I Wastelanded him on turn 2. I end up killing him with Young Pyromancer and tokens, with a Flusterstorm protecting me from most mana production.

BONUS ROUND 5: BUG Midrange [3-1] - A friend an I jammed a few preboard games while we were waiting for the Miracles versus Colorless Eldrazi match up to finished it three games. Just some general thoughts, when Grixis is ahead, really the only scary threat is Toxic Deluge. Their planeswalkers can be taken out by going wide or with TNN and their creatures can be chumped all day by Elementals. Match up feels reasonably favorable.

I have been really happy with the deck over the last couple months. I have been trying out varying configurations just testing out different combinations. I think next up, I may run Bob's list from EW and give the maindeck Spell Pierces a go. Anyway thanks for reading!

[IamHANDSOME]

which version is better? The one with or without Stifle? In my meta I do expect a lot of Storm, Blade builds and stuff like Maverick and DnT.

[LewisCBR]

which version is better? The one with or without Stifle? In my meta I do expect a lot of Storm, Blade builds and stuff like Maverick and DnT.

I think it comes down to personal playstyle, to be honest. To me, it makes sense to run Stifle, but the 'non-Stifle/non-Cabal Therapy in the main' version has also beein doing well lately. With the extra YP in that version, i suppose the game plan is to overload on good threats, while also increasing the likely hood of a YP/Cabal Therapy combo blowout post board.

When i stick a threat, and get to untap with it, the only thing on my mind is how can i disrupt my opponent and protect this threat to victory. With that as the plan i feel like, countering, stifling, and wastelanding are the type of cards that can most logically follow this route. For me, and how i like to play, if i have a TNN out, i'd much rather be holding a Stifle in hand than another Probe or YP, which is what the 'non-Stifle in the main deck' versions are using as replacements to Stifle.

What i do like about the non-Stifle version is the extra Spell Pierce in the main. I really wish i could find room for another Pierce in the main, or even the board, in my versions of Stifle Grixis Delver. I do agree that Pierce is particularly powerful right now. Even more so if you manage to Stifle a fetchland or two.

Stifle isnt just for Fetchlands, though. If you buy into the theory that the goal of this deck is to stick a hard to answer threat, and then make it even harder for your opponent to actually answer that threat, then Stifle is fantastic. It counters a Lilliana edict, a Snapcaster activation that might target the removal spell your opponent needs, the EE ability, a Jitte trigger, and a million other things as you tempo your way to the finish line.

In my head, i've been playing the game of whenever i draw a Stifle, do i wish it was a YP, Pierce, or Probe instead? Most of the time the answer is an easy no, but i do think both versions are fine because the core of the deck, and its threats, are already ridiculously good.

[Thresh84]

It would appear that Grixis Delver is somewhat shifting away from Cabal Therapy in the main, which is apparently because of Bob Huang's high placement in larger tournaments and the rise of 4C control?

Also, what matches are we finding that Spell Pierce is better than Cabal Therapy in the main. For awhile, myself and I noticed others were using either more removal or additional Cabal Therapy main in place of the one Spell Pierce. Also curious what sideboarding tips someone might have playing the Noah Walker special (cabal therapy main) against the DTBs?

[ironclad8690]

It would appear that Grixis Delver is somewhat shifting away from Cabal Therapy in the main, which is apparently because of Bob Huang's high placement in larger tournaments and the rise of 4C control?

Also, what matches are we finding that Spell Pierce is better than Cabal Therapy in the main. For awhile, myself and I noticed others were using either more removal or additional Cabal Therapy main in place of the one Spell Pierce. Also curious what sideboarding tips someone might have playing the Noah Walker special (cabal therapy main) against the DTBs?

It's mainly Czech Pile for Spell Pierce. The idea is that they invest all of this mana into a K Command or Jace and you just blow them out. With Cabal Therapy, you can get the card out of their hand but they don't lose any mana investment, so they haven't lost any tempo. The tempo swing from Piercing something can often spell victory.

Sideboarding tips vs DTB with Noah special:

Mirror match: I like to cut a couple of cabal therapy for 2 removal spells. You can board out some number of FoW and or Daze depending on play/draw, but I like to leave all no matter what.

Death and Taxes: I like to board out all FOW and Daze for artifact hate, removal, and additional discard/hate. Pithing Needle shines here, but mostly you want the spot removal/sweepers/control creatures like lavamancer.

Ant: Cut the Dismember/Forked Bolt, some combination of creatures and bolts (I like -1TNN, -1 Gurmag, -2 Bolt) for extra discard, extra counterspells, and surgicals. The 1 Gurmag can be nice to have because he's such a beast of a clock, sometimes you just need to close the game out real quick before they topdeck a tutor or past in flames.

Pile: I like to board out 2 Forces for pyroblasts. Forked Bolt/Darkblast are good out of the board, you can cut more forces if you want.

Elves: Bring in the spot removal for a combination of FoW/Daze/Pierce/Therapy. Fluster can be good against the big spells (Glimpse, Order).

The thing about sideboarding with Delver decks is that there are many paths you can take with Daze/Fow count and your plan against the other guy, there isn't really any one "true" best method. Your opponent might play around Daze religiously for example, board em out. FoW isn't always as bad as a lot of people say it is g2-g3: remember it answers any spell that is cast. Sometimes that is a better answer than a removal or discard spell.

[Thresh84]

With Cabal Therapy, you can get the card out of their hand but they don't lose any mana investment, so they haven't lost any tempo. The tempo swing from Piercing something can often spell victory.

I agree that this is the best case scenario, sometimes (a lot of the times) it doesn't work out that way. Being that either of the version (Cabal Therapy or Spell Pierce) doesn't play stifle, their ability to pay the 2 mana for Pierce is very high. Not to mention, the reuse factor from Cabal Therapy for zero mana is huge. Again I understand the theory behind Spell Pierce against Pile, just the practicality doesn't seem there.

[ironclad8690]

I agree that this is the best case scenario, sometimes (a lot of the times) it doesn't work out that way. Being that either of the version (Cabal Therapy or Spell Pierce) doesn't play stifle, their ability to pay the 2 mana for Pierce is very high. Not to mention, the reuse factor from Cabal Therapy for zero mana is huge. Again I understand the theory behind Spell Pierce against Pile, just the practicality doesn't seem there.

Not saying you're wrong, but if Czech pile has an extra 2 mana when they are casting a haymaker, then something has gone horribly wrong. In my testing they almost never have an extra 2 mana "lying around". They have to jam the big spells to avoid dying, and then pierce remains good when they have to Snapcaster something. Pierce has also been fine at just countering cantrips when they need lands, or countering fatal push/edict when you have a good threat.

If they are playing around pierce religiously then just board it out for therapy g2-3.

[Thresh84]

Not saying you're wrong, but if Czech pile has an extra 2 mana when they are casting a haymaker, then something has gone horribly wrong. In my testing they almost never have an extra 2 mana "lying around". They have to jam the big spells to avoid dying, and then pierce remains good when they have to Snapcaster something. Pierce has also been fine at just countering cantrips when they need lands, or countering fatal push/edict when you have a good threat.

If they are playing around pierce religiously then just board it out for therapy g2-3.

+1

[EronRelentless]

Today I had a really painful loss against 4 C Loam. I had to Force his Chalice of the Void and then got wrecked by Choke and played a Gurmag Angler which was hold with Maze of Ith, then he started Life from the Loam and found a Liliana.
In the Match I boarded out 3 Stifle, 2 Spell Pierce and 1 Forked Bolt and put in 2 Diabolic Edict, 1 Kolaghan's Command, 2 Surgical Extraction and 1 Bitterblossom but no Ancient Grudge.

Can someone give me a hint for sideboarding against 4c Loam?
I am not sure about the power of these Cards either on the play and on the draw:
Force of Will
Stifle
Spell Pierce
Cabal Therapy
Lightning Bolt

[ironclad8690]

Today I had a really painful loss against 4 C Loam. I had to Force his Chalice of the Void and then got wrecked by Choke and played a Gurmag Angler which was hold with Maze of Ith, then he started Life from the Loam and found a Liliana.
In the Match I boarded out 3 Stifle, 2 Spell Pierce and 1 Forked Bolt and put in 2 Diabolic Edict, 1 Kolaghan's Command, 2 Surgical Extraction and 1 Bitterblossom but no Ancient Grudge.

Can someone give me a hint for sideboarding against 4c Loam?
I am not sure about the power of these Cards either on the play and on the draw:
Force of Will
Stifle
Spell Pierce
Cabal Therapy
Lightning Bolt

I like to take out 2 Pierce for the surgicals. You don't want to be leaving mana up and they just play decay. I like bringing in grudge. Mox and chalice are fine targets. I'd probably cut 2 stifle for em. Stifle isn't great but also not completely dead. I could see shaving some probes too.

I have found the key to the matchup is to just go full aggro. Many times this will force them to play into daze. I wouldn't bring in bitterblossom because they already leave in a bunch of decays and you really want them to lose tempo to decay something. Edict seems fine for either probe or stifle as well. Command is good as another out to chalice. Sometimes we just scoop to choke but that's part of the delver game.

[EronRelentless]

I like to take out 2 Pierce for the surgicals. You don't want to be leaving mana up and they just play decay. I like bringing in grudge. Mox and chalice are fine targets. I'd probably cut 2 stifle for em. Stifle isn't great but also not completely dead. I could see shaving some probes too.

I have found the key to the matchup is to just go full aggro. Many times this will force them to play into daze. I wouldn't bring in bitterblossom because they already leave in a bunch of decays and you really want them to lose tempo to decay something. Edict seems fine for either probe or stifle as well. Command is good as another out to chalice. Sometimes we just scoop to choke but that's part of the delver game.

Thanks for the advice. If you want to see the Match you can check it on my friends YouTube Channel. https://youtu.be/i_KXQnLan0s
For reference here is my Decklist:
//Lands
4 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland

//Instants
4 Brainstorm
3 Daze
1 Dismember
4 Force of Will
1 Kolaghan's Command
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Spell Pierce
3 Stifle

//Sorceries
1 Forked Bolt
4 Ponder

//Creatures
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Gurmag Angler
2 Snapcaster Mage
2 True-Name Nemesis

//Sideboard
SB: 1 Ancient Grudge
SB: 1 Umezawa's Jitte
SB: 2 Surgical Extraction
SB: 1 Izzet Staticaster
SB: 2 Diabolic Edict
SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 1 Pithing Needle
SB: 2 Pyroblast
SB: 1 Kolaghan's Command
SB: 1 Bitterblossom
SB: 1 Dread of Night

[Gul_Dukat]

Hey all, I have been on a tear with grixis delver on modo (four 5-0s in a row). And want to build irl, only problem is my LGS is infested with pox (there is a group of friends who all play pox, and another pox player on top of that), any ideas of hate cards we can play? I was thinking enchantments and artifacts are a good way to exploit them, a bitterblossom, or a life from the loam, or even a compost/sulfuric vortex? alongside replacing my flusters with pierces or something like that, any ideas on how to approach this mu? any help would be mucho appreciated. My lgs is also infested with lands, toronto being the city with perhaps the highest tabernacle per capita. (Maybe grixis delver is a deathwish at this store). There is also lots of 4c leo.

[EronRelentless]

Hey all, I have been on a tear with grixis delver on modo (four 5-0s in a row). And want to build irl, only problem is my LGS is infested with pox (there is a group of friends who all play pox, and another pox player on top of that), any ideas of hate cards we can play? I was thinking enchantments and artifacts are a good way to exploit them, a bitterblossom, or a life from the loam, or even a compost/sulfuric vortex? alongside replacing my flusters with pierces or something like that, any ideas on how to approach this mu? any help would be mucho appreciated. My lgs is also infested with lands, toronto being the city with perhaps the highest tabernacle per capita. (Maybe grixis delver is a deathwish at this store). There is also lots of 4c leo.

Bitterblossom and Baleful Strix should be enough to make the Matchup ok for you. If you can build a black heavy build, you can also play Liliana, the Last Hope, its should be very good as well. Compost or Leovold should require a 2nd green Land in the Deck I guess.

[rostov]

Request for advice:

My deck used to have, among the usual stuff:
- Liliana, the last hope
- Kolaghan's command
in the main.

I've since put 2x spell pierce inside. I've been facing a lot of burn among the rest of the meta, and would like some advice on mainboarding/sideboarding: so far 2x hydroblasts are in the side: what else should I put in and what's the sideboarding plan against burn?

Cheers

[EronRelentless]

Request for advice:

My deck used to have, among the usual stuff:
- Liliana, the last hope
- Kolaghan's command
in the main.

I've since put 2x spell pierce inside. I've been facing a lot of burn among the rest of the meta, and would like some advice on mainboarding/sideboarding: so far 2x hydroblasts are in the side: what else should I put in and what's the sideboarding plan against burn?

Cheers

I guess Delver, True-Name Nemesis and Gurmag Angler are best best Creatures against Burn. You need a fast clock and then your soft Counters will be as it's best. If you wait too long they can simply outclass your Spell Pierce, Daze and Flusterstorms by waiting for enough mana.
You can put one Jitte in your Sideboard which helps a lot in the Matchup, they can't really bring Artifact Removal against Delver.

[LewisCBR]

Hey all, I have been on a tear with grixis delver on modo (four 5-0s in a row). And want to build irl, only problem is my LGS is infested with pox (there is a group of friends who all play pox, and another pox player on top of that), any ideas of hate cards we can play? I was thinking enchantments and artifacts are a good way to exploit them, a bitterblossom, or a life from the loam, or even a compost/sulfuric vortex? alongside replacing my flusters with pierces or something like that, any ideas on how to approach this mu? any help would be mucho appreciated. My lgs is also infested with lands, toronto being the city with perhaps the highest tabernacle per capita. (Maybe grixis delver is a deathwish at this store). There is also lots of 4c leo.

That is an amazing run, man, congrats!

[Adan]

Hey all, I have been on a tear with grixis delver on modo (four 5-0s in a row). And want to build irl, only problem is my LGS is infested with pox (there is a group of friends who all play pox, and another pox player on top of that), any ideas of hate cards we can play? I was thinking enchantments and artifacts are a good way to exploit them, a bitterblossom, or a life from the loam, or even a compost/sulfuric vortex? alongside replacing my flusters with pierces or something like that, any ideas on how to approach this mu? any help would be mucho appreciated. My lgs is also infested with lands, toronto being the city with perhaps the highest tabernacle per capita. (Maybe grixis delver is a deathwish at this store). There is also lots of 4c leo.

Pox is about aggressive 1 for 1 trades usually, and you need things like Young Pyromancer to blank a lot of their stuff, at the same time you need to protect it from Fatal Push. Spell Snare is a very good card against Pox, Spell Pierce can lose value in a long game (which is probably gonna happen). BUG Delver probably has better options since Sylvan Library and Liliana the Last Hope are easier to support and get much more worse when your manabase has Volcanic Islands. That being said, I think Liliana the Last Hope is devastating and maybe you are better off playing BUG Delver instead, although I think Young Pyromancer is also one of the cards that gives you an edge because they really need Push or CollBrut.

[Gul_Dukat]

Thanks for the advice! One more thing that has been bothering me is the leovold matchup, how do you all feel about it? any specific plans/sideboarding that gives you lots of success?

[EronRelentless]

Thanks for the advice! One more thing that has been bothering me is the leovold matchup, how do you all feel about it? any specific plans/sideboarding that gives you lots of success?

I don't like Daze and Force of Will in the Matchup, because Games go very long and you don't want to get Card disadvantage. Since I changed my SB (1 Bitterblossom and 1 Kolaghan's Command) to beat this Matchup, my win percentage against it went up significantly to about 65:35. Referring to your newest Decklist on mtggoldfish I would board similiar this:
-4 Force, -4 Daze, -1 Gitaxian Probe
+2 RedBlast, +1 Pyroblast, +2 Flusterstorm, +2 Kolaghan's Command, + 1Liliana, +1 Snapcaster Mage

[Gul_Dukat]

I don't like Daze and Force of Will in the Matchup, because Games go very long and you don't want to get Card disadvantage. Since I changed my SB (1 Bitterblossom and 1 Kolaghan's Command) to beat this Matchup, my win percentage against it went up significantly to about 65:35. Referring to your newest Decklist on mtggoldfish I would board similiar this:
-4 Force, -4 Daze, -1 Gitaxian Probe
+2 RedBlast, +1 Pyroblast, +2 Flusterstorm, +2 Kolaghan's Command, + 1Liliana, +1 Snapcaster Mage

I was having trouble outgrinding them with my list, since even though I had access to these fantastic grindy cards, they just grind better. I was getting like a 50/60 percent winrate which isn't bad, but I wanted better so tried to add 2 price of progress to combat the matchup on a angle of here is my ridiculous card that is extremely easy to cast can you deal with it, cutting a red blast and my marsh casualties and 5-0d a league after trying it, got paired vs lands twice so pop did some work there, excited to keep testing with it.

I've seen bob huangs list running a pop side, and I feel like it's a card I want access to. Though of course with pop the more they play around it the worse it gets, but they can only play around it so much, and some players won't even be thinking of it at all because it's not a super popular card choice in grixis.

[Canderson3000]

I don't like Daze and Force of Will in the Matchup, because Games go very long and you don't want to get Card disadvantage.


Your sideboard plan is interesting. I personally leave the daze in even on the draw and bring in winter orb as well. The 4 color deck is really greedy and the winter orb shuts down the Snapcaster nonsense pretty well and keeps you daze live into the late game. If you go on this strategy, you have to target DRS, obviously.

[atopebenidorm]

Now I am trying a vial smasher the fierce alternative. I think is a real card for this deck and we don´t need a lot of changes.


//Lands (19)

4 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Bloodistained Mire
1 Badlands
2 Underground Sea
4 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland

//Instants
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Fireblast
1 Fire/Ice
1 Kolaghan's Command
1 Spell pierce

//Sorceries
4 Ponder
2 Temporal Mastery

//Creatures
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
3 Gurmag Angler
3 Vial Smasher the fierce

//Sideboard
SB: 2 Pirokinesis or 1 pirokinesis and 1 price of progress
SB: 1 Nihil spellbomb
SB: 2 Surgical Extraction
SB: 2 Diabolic Edict
SB: 2 Flusterstorm
SB: 2 Pyroblast
SB: 1 Kolaghan's Command
SB: 3 Thoughtseize

Obviously the pack Young pyromancer/Gitaxian Probe/Cabal Therapy is reemplace for Vial smasher + Gurmag Angler/fires and Masterys/Thoughtseize.

I think the secret is not a secret, play like a classic version. If you find Vial Smasher your oponent have 2 turn for kill it because if you find a big spell the damage maybe be enough to win easy and fast.

You have 12 "Big spells" and 8 are in a classic decklist:

- 2 Temporal Mastery and 3 Gurmag Angler. They are 7 Damage
- 4 Fow And 1 Kolaghan´s commnad. They are 5 damage
- 2 Fireblast. They are 10 Damage.

There are other cards like Thunderows Wrath or misdirection. Maybe one is good enough to include but I prefer a card like Fire/ice Vs Baleful strix, d&t and delver decks

[schtormy]

@Gul_Dukat: I've followed your streaks with your heavier B list.

I like the fact that it's a bit stronger late game especially post side.

I also like the idea of including 1 to 2 PoP since the RL meta tends to be land and 4c loam heavier these days (and overall 4c heavy).

I play Bob Huang's list lately and I'm tempted to try out your take on things.

However there's 1 thing I don't get: why the +1 fetch -1 wasteland? What's the reasoning behind it?
I'd get a +1 volc -1 wasteland (I think) but the fetch choice puzzles me.

Anyway congratulations on your power runs and GL for the RL event :)

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk

[Gul_Dukat]

@Gul_Dukat: I've followed your streaks with your heavier B list.

I like the fact that it's a bit stronger late game especially post side.

I also like the idea of including 1 to 2 PoP since the RL meta tends to be land and 4c loam heavier these days (and overall 4c heavy).

I play Bob Huang's list lately and I'm tempted to try out your take on things.

However there's 1 thing I don't get: why the +1 fetch -1 wasteland? What's the reasoning behind it?
I'd get a +1 volc -1 wasteland (I think) but the fetch choice puzzles me.

Anyway congratulations on your power runs and GL for the RL event :)

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk


Got another 5-0 tonight, and one that got posted yesterday so very happy with my list, my manabase is pretty strange. I added an extra fetch over a waste/volc for maximum consistency basically, (consistency of brainstorm, and not being colorscrewed) playing 4 wastes is probably just correct, but I am not sure what to cut yet, and don't find myself wanting more wastes in the games I am playing, though again, waste is absurdly powerful and it's probably just incorrect to not play 4. I consider my snap to be in the wasteland spot, and siding into the 2 snaps and 2 kcommand + lili made the extra land seem nice, and a extra land just for general consistency. But 14 lands is probably enough, and it's possible the clunky cards (snaps, k commands, lili) should be replaced with grudges/abrade and a red blast or something also allowing me to smoothly go down to 14 lands

[Gul_Dukat]

Hey all, finished 2nd in the weekly legacy challenge losing to lands in the finals.

I had some interesting games today and took some screenshots to show you all, and ask what you would do in these situations.

This is the first round, g2 against pile.

https://i.imgur.com/WNyoYP7.png


This is the sixth round, first game against lands. You are going to draw a tarn off the probe and you have not yet played a land this turn, you also cast a probe on turn 3 and they had the exact same hand minus one grove, this means they decided to not cast gamble or fire last turn, and on the end of their third turn i activated shaman and they did not try to cast fire then either. the question again, what do you do here?

https://i.imgur.com/Qitnk2C.png

[TruKnightmare]

I need a little help preparing for a 16-player Championship tournament. I'm a pretty proficient Grixis Delver player (Day 2'd repeatedly; won a few local tournaments) but this is the first time I'll have plenty of an advance to metagame.

I'm trying to narrow down whether to play (mainboard) Stifles, Cabal Therapies, or neither. Additionally, I'm trying to narrow down my sideboard, as well. Card availability is not an issue. What I'm currently trying to choose from is:

Pyroblasts
Surgicals
Ancient Grudges
Diabolic Edicts
Dismembers
Pithing Needles
Grafdigger's Cages
Forked Bolts
Flusterstorms
Dread of Nights
Cabal Therapies
Marsh Casualties
Null Rods
Kolaghan's Commands
Price of Progresses
Lilianas, the Last Hope
Grim Lavamancers
Izzet Staticasters

If you have other sideboard options, please let me know. The decks I'll be running into are:
2 x Infect
2 x Goblins
1 x ANT
1 x 12 U/G Post
1 x Turbo Depths
1 x Czech Pile
1 x UR Delver
1 x BUG Delver/Control
1-2 x Elves
0-1 x Lands
0-1 x Delver variant
1 x Unknown

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

[schtormy]

@gul_dak: I'm far from an expert but I thought about what I'd do.
For the first scenario, I'd like to kill a DRS to allow yourself to win the GY battle especially since he has a Kess onlining.
Because he is full tapped, I think I'd go for SCM + bolt using the wasteland for the 1 mana. This way I deny their kess and their DRS and get to keep the Kcommand for optimal use later on.

Against land... Well I have no idea as to what is optimal in this situation. Is he waiting for a gamble into his combo? And keeping the cards in order to minimise the risks to discard DD Thespian?

I guess I'd like to cabal his gamble in this case...

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk

[Gul_Dukat]

I need a little help preparing for a 16-player Championship tournament. I'm a pretty proficient Grixis Delver player (Day 2'd repeatedly; won a few local tournaments) but this is the first time I'll have plenty of an advance to metagame.

I'm trying to narrow down whether to play (mainboard) Stifles, Cabal Therapies, or neither. Additionally, I'm trying to narrow down my sideboard, as well. Card availability is not an issue. What I'm currently trying to choose from is:

Pyroblasts
Surgicals
Ancient Grudges
Diabolic Edicts
Dismembers
Pithing Needles
Grafdigger's Cages
Forked Bolts
Flusterstorms
Dread of Nights
Cabal Therapies
Marsh Casualties
Null Rods
Kolaghan's Commands
Price of Progresses
Lilianas, the Last Hope
Grim Lavamancers
Izzet Staticasters

If you have other sideboard options, please let me know. The decks I'll be running into are:
2 x Infect
2 x Goblins
1 x ANT
1 x 12 U/G Post
1 x Turbo Depths
1 x Czech Pile
1 x UR Delver
1 x BUG Delver/Control
1-2 x Elves
0-1 x Lands
0-1 x Delver variant
1 x Unknown

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Sounds like you could also mainboard grim lavamancer in this meta. and jitte could be good. artifact removal seems to be not so great with almost no dnt or chalice decks. therapy seems better than stifle and pierce in this meta. lots of creature control seems good here, maybe even a rough tumble type effect, or a sudden demise, marsh, stati and lili of the last hope all seem real good. the best approach in my opinion is to find a elephant sideboard way vs this meta, decide what the weak cards are vs the creature decks ie goblins, infect, elves and have exactly that many nice cards to slot in.


and @Schtormy, yeah taking gamble seems correct. cuts them from their close to 1 mana demonic tutor which really limits their options. and vs 4c decided to go snap bolt on a deathrite, and thought if I attacked with snap they would block with kess, and then I could go k command shock kess return snap, sadly they did not block, which could have been bad if they had a removal spell to kill both my deathrites with kess. but them not blocking made them take an extra 2, and I ended up dealing them a massive blow with price.

[funkymankevx]

How have you been finding Price of Progress over all? I tried one in the board at the Card Kingdom 1K on the weekend and found it pretty good. I'm going to try two in the board this week at my weekly.

[schtormy]

How have you been finding Price of Progress over all? I tried one in the board at the Card Kingdom 1K on the weekend and found it pretty good. I'm going to try two in the board this week at my weekly.I love PoP and I wish I could have room for 2 in the side board but it's a bit hard to justify it.

However I have less than a hundred games with it in the side and didn't see it too often.

It's never been a dead card so far and it always had great impact when played.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk

[Thresh84]

I find it interesting that after Huang's wins with 2 TNN and 2 Spell Pierce MD that this is the standard for many tournaments. Looks to be the case regardless of Meta. I know he moved to this configuration due to Czech Pile being played a lot more. Looking at some tournaments and there deck breakdown seems this is just your standard copy/paste version with most wins, without thinking about meta or anything. Won't be shocked if this dude's list on MTGO (http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=25742&iddeck=202141) is a standard soon being he has topped a challenge and been undeaded deck many times. Also funny to see the list play 1 Cabal Therapy and 1 Spell Pierce, its like "hell, just can't make up my mind so play one of each". At the end of the day, super minor changes that aren't game breaking that often.

[pjetr0]

Hi guys, Im having troubles with straight UW stoneblade decks, playing supreme verdict and back to basics main. Any tips about general strategy and how to sideboard? Im playing 2 therapy, 1 pierce, 1 dismember build.

Sideboard:

2 Surgical Extraction
2 Pyroblast
1 Invasive Surgery
2 Diabolic Edict
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Dread of Night
1 Fire Coventant
1 Forked Bolt
1 Darkblast
1 Abrade
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Pitnihg Needle

Regards,
Peter

[rostov]

Hi guys, Im having troubles with straight UW stoneblade decks, playing supreme verdict and back to basics main. Any tips about general strategy and how to sideboard? Im playing 2 therapy, 1 pierce, 1 dismember build.


Ditto. Also having trouble.

In addition having trouble against graveyard mechanics (dredge) but more so against turbo depths. Cheers

[Stevestamopz]

Re stoneblade

Play tnn and abrade/grudge/k.command
??
Win

Matchup feels very favoured for me.

[schtormy]

You mustn't have played the B2B and Supreme verdict version then.

And your message reads quite contemptuous.

Also Kcommand is not an auto in for many lists (3 CCM is clunky) and it won't help you under B2B.

I am afraid I can't offer much help from experience as I lost everytime Supreme Judgement and/or B2B hit the board, I still decided that the best course of action was to hold on to Pyroblast as a get out of jail option (which I didn't do in my few encounters with this version) and to resist the urge to swarm the board.

If some better ideas emerge, I'm very happy to learn and improve :)

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk

[Thresh84]

You mustn't have played the B2B and Supreme verdict version then.

And your message reads quite contemptuous.

Also Kcommand is not an auto in for many lists (3 CCM is clunky) and it won't help you under B2B.



Agreed, he obviously has no real experience in the MU. Yes, blasts are your friend in this MU.

[Thresh84]

Re stoneblade

Play tnn and abrade/grudge/k.command
??
Win

Matchup feels very favoured for me.

Look, someone has seen South Park. :rolleyes:

[Stevestamopz]

Is that from South Park? Wow. They really did invent everything.

B2b and Verdict are 3 and 4 mana spells... we play a tempo deck. I don't get it.

The addition of b2b isn't exactly new, i don't know how you've all decided that no one could possibly have experience against a matchup if their record against it is different to yours. If you do have that belief, why bother asking then? Christ.

[schneff8]

Question regarding a line that has came up a few time.

I am playing against mono red stompy and my hand is force, brainstorm, cabal therapy, delver, underground, ponder.

They are on the play and first turn bloodmoon. I force pitching brainstorm. Now on my turn I can cabal therapy for chalice because I know it locks my out of the game or play Delver and try to get a clock going.

I figure they have 4 cards left in their hand with a roughly 30% chance of it being a chalice. So I pick Delver and clock has to be the best play.

My question is with how punishing a game 1 chalice is should I play around that 30% chance? Is playing the Delver the best line?

[Nonbo]

Hey all, does anyone have some tips to offer for the storm match up? A few specific questions;

How, if at all should my general approach to the game or sideboard change depending of which storm flavor I'm facing?

How aggressively should I mulligan? My gut tells me that I want at least one permission spell (or something like probe therapy) but I feel like that leads me to games where I get Duressed and left with 4 or 5 cards.

Turn 1 with the following hand
fetchx2
deathrite
delver
force of will
ponder
brainstorm

If you keep this hand, do you run out a threat to get the clock going or hold up brainstorm for duress/cabal therapy?

[Mzfroste]

Hey all, does anyone have some tips to offer for the storm match up? A few specific questions;

How, if at all should my general approach to the game or sideboard change depending of which storm flavor I'm facing?

How aggressively should I mulligan? My gut tells me that I want at least one permission spell (or something like probe therapy) but I feel like that leads me to games where I get Duressed and left with 4 or 5 cards.

Turn 1 with the following hand
fetchx2
deathrite
delver
force of will
ponder
brainstorm

If you keep this hand, do you run out a threat to get the clock going or hold up brainstorm for duress/cabal therapy?

Storm will often wait on their duress effects for when they are closer to going off, T1 cantrips are more common. And DRS is a particularly good threat vs Storm, so I'd lead with that.

[LewisCBR]

Hey all, does anyone have some tips to offer for the storm match up? A few specific questions;

How, if at all should my general approach to the game or sideboard change depending of which storm flavor I'm facing?

How aggressively should I mulligan? My gut tells me that I want at least one permission spell (or something like probe therapy) but I feel like that leads me to games where I get Duressed and left with 4 or 5 cards.

Turn 1 with the following hand
fetchx2
deathrite
delver
force of will
ponder
brainstorm

If you keep this hand, do you run out a threat to get the clock going or hold up brainstorm for duress/cabal therapy?

You know, contrary to popular belief that Delver is good vs all combo, i think Storm is one of the decks worst matchups. When talking about traditional combo decks like UB Reanimator or Sneak & Show, Delver is very good, but Storm is built to crush counterspell decks and i struggle with the matchup frequently.

Storm doesnt like to see discard and permanent based hate; like Thalia, Chalice, or Thorns. Since we dont run any of those cards, Cabal Therapy is your best hate card. Storm is very resilient in general, and like you pointed out, it simply discards your counterspells.

I always like to play against Storm pretty aggressively. That sample hand you listed out is amazing, and you should lead with a DRS, then can trip + Delver to try and find more disruption. If they have discard into the combo in turn 1 or 2, then they just have it, what can you do.

[Agrippa91]

I would agree that storm is a bad matchup preboard, but postboard is an entirely different matter: We're loaded to the brink with disruption. In my experience Deathrite is like a little hate bear, we also have access to discard and counterspells, optimally grafdigger's cage and answers to Empty. That's more angles of attack than most other decks can muster.
The most important thing is to have enough disruption in the sb, I disagree with people who leave in bolts or TNN, personally I have 8 sideboard cards: 2 Marsh Casualties, 4 Thoughtseize, 2 Surgical (I play a heavier black version without pyromancers).
People are argueing about whether to bring in Pyroblast. I think the card is suboptimal and can be played around quite easily, personally I don't like it. It often times forces me to tap out just to get a blue spell when I'd rather keep up mana with deathrite or a counterspell.

To that question: That hand is great, with a daze is might be near perfect. I think you might overrate brainstorming in response to a discard spell. That's good from the storm side so they can hide their one tutor, then show you a hand with all mana acceleration. As a delver player though all you're risking is hiding your FoW, then dying because they're going off that turn.

I pretty much never brainstorm in response since that brainstorm is generally super bad. I let them take it, otherwise they risk me drawing into a counterspell. Them taking brainstorm though means they can't take anything else, so often times they're forced to e.g. take FoW which leaves me with let's say a potential DRS activation and a chance to draw Spell Pierce, FoW, Stifle or whatever other disruption I choose to run.

[Sceadugenga]

@atopebenidorm

How has the vial smasher build been working for you? How badly do you find combo to be without pyro and therapy? I'm really interested in that variant, so any opinions or results from you or anyone else would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[Der_Endboss]

Do anyone of you know if there is a comprehensive sideboard guide anywhere? Please Link or send me a PM :-)

[Scootmin]

Hey all - not new to Grixis (and certainly not new to Magic), but I just made the plunge into MTGO, so I figured I'd start posting instead of just reading.

Thus far, I have seen A LOT of ANT online, and I feel like I'm extremely favored. It's certainly not an auto win, because sometimes they win the die roll and go off on turn 1 or you mulligan to death or whatever. I run 4 Probes, 3 Therapy main with 4 FoW, 4 Daze. Game 1 is much more of a toss up, but I feel like the matchup is incredibly favored post-board. I bring in the 4th Therapy, 2x Surgicals, a Pyro and REB (ideally would be a 2nd Pryo, but $$), SCM, Flusterstorm, and Spell Pierce. That leaves me taking out 4x Bolts, 2x TNN, and typically 1x Wasteland and 1x Angler.

I'm currently 6-3 in the matchup (which seems like a lot in only 9 Leagues). One loss was to a misclick, one loss was to opponent having a turn 1 kill on the play and a perfect draw game 2, and the third loss was to Orim67 - and I don't mean to dismiss their victory because they're obviously proficient with the deck, but I had miserable draws.

===============
Separate topic, I've recently been playing against Miracles a bit more frequently. I see it as a somewhat recent topic, but what is the general view of the matchup? I find it to be pretty winnable, though their perfect draws seem to beat ours - thoughts?

[wcm8]

Pyro and REB (ideally would be a 2nd Pryo, but $$)
===============
Separate topic, I've recently been playing against Miracles a bit more frequently. I see it as a somewhat recent topic, but what is the general view of the matchup? I find it to be pretty winnable, though their perfect draws seem to beat ours - thoughts?

It's actually a good idea to run a split of Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast. The reason is because of Cabal Therapy (and other similar cards, e.g. Meddling Mage, Surgical Extraction, etc.). Granted this doesn't come up too frequently, but it's a more relevant consideration than the few corner cases where you are burning a Pyroblast on a non-blue target just to trigger a Pyromancer token and/or build up a graveyard for Delve.

Regarding Miracles, it seems to be slightly unfavorable (like maybe 60-40 in UWr's favor), although Grixis is very capable of getting a quick aggressive start and dealing 20 before they're able to stabilize. Keep your Force of Wills in so you have a hard counter for important cards like Terminus, Jace, Counterbalance, etc. You can make this matchup easier by running sideboard cards such as Winter Orb, (more) Red Elemental Blasts, Vendilion Clique, Sulfuric Vortex, etc. Perhaps consider running a planeswalker or two that grants long-term advantage, e.g. Liliana, the Last Hope, Garruk Relentless, or possibly consider something that can provide a steady stream of hard-to-deal-with damage, e.g. Bitterblossom, Honden of Infinite Rage.

Miracles has always been fairly popular, but now since it's a DTB you definitely want to take the matchup seriously and plan accordingly. You may also want to consider bringing in Izzet Staticaster and/or Dread of Night / Sulfur Elemental if you have them to deal with their Monastery Mentors. Engineered Explosives is good as it can be used to answer Counterbalance as well as clear the board of Angel/Monk tokens.

[Scootmin]

the few corner cases where you are burning a Pyroblast on a non-blue target just to trigger a Pyromancer token

I actually just won a game yesterday by Pyroblasting my YP to get exactsies. I don't think I would have lost had it been REB (and I currently run the split anyway, so kinda moot), but who knows what an extra turn in legacy is going to bring.

Solid insight into Miracles. I do plan to eventually get a Last Hope and work it in the sideboard somewhere, especially if Miracles continues to show up in large numbers.

[Plague Sliver]

Got wrecked by Czech Pile running Lilly last hope over the weekend. I guess it wasn't the critical game, and there were other reasons I lost the round. But I definitely felt her power.

I could see a case for running her if I ran 3x Seas and 2x Volcanics. Then I could also experiment with maindeck Fatal Push and/or Dismember. But I don't really want to do that.

[wcm8]

Got wrecked by Czech Pile running Lilly last hope over the weekend. I guess it wasn't the critical game, and there were other reasons I lost the round. But I definitely felt her power.

I could see a case for running her if I ran 3x Seas and 2x Volcanics. Then I could also experiment with maindeck Fatal Push and/or Dismember. But I don't really want to do that.

She's legit and quite amazing in a lot of matchups -- certainly against anything that has a bunch of X/1 critters. Her other abilities are similarly useful.

For a somewhat similar effect of killing X/1's every turn: Honden of Infinite Rage.

Some advantages it has over Liliana:
-Easier mana requirements
-More resiliency as it can't be killed via combat or burn
-Can ping your opponent on an empty board

It's competing for the same sideboard slot that you'd be running Grim Lavamancer in. While I appreciate Lavaman's lower casting cost and hitting harder, he dies to a slight breeze. I'm testing Honden at the moment and have been pretty impressed.

[Scootmin]

She's legit and quite amazing in a lot of matchups -- certainly against anything that has a bunch of X/1 critters. Her other abilities are similarly useful.

For a somewhat similar effect of killing X/1's every turn: Honden of Infinite Rage.

Some advantages it has over Liliana:
-Easier mana requirements
-More resiliency as it can't be killed via combat or burn
-Can ping your opponent on an empty board

It's competing for the same sideboard slot that you'd be running Grim Lavamancer in. While I appreciate Lavaman's lower casting cost and hitting harder, he dies to a slight breeze. I'm testing Honden at the moment and have been pretty impressed.

Do you bring in the Honden against Chalice decks to increase your non-1CC cards? It seems like it would be very slow, and maybe getting the YP token or fueling Angler is just better? Perhaps on the draw instead of the play? I have no experience with the card outside of draft.

[Plague Sliver]

If we're considering Honden, then we might have to consider Bitterblossom, too. I do like the ping as a way to get rid of Strixen, though.

[eyeownyu]

does anyone have tips for the czech pile matchup. I know its supposed to be a hard matchup, but we are grixis delver, we don't have hard matchups. Right now I'm on the stock Bob Huang list, and I've had a lot more success against pile by playing stifle. However, I dont think stifle is good enough right now against everything else. Any tips on this matchup with the stock Bob Huang list? I'm playing in a legacy GP shortly. Thanks!

[TheManWithaPlan]

does anyone have tips for the czech pile matchup. I know its supposed to be a hard matchup, but we are grixis delver, we don't have hard matchups. Right now I'm on the stock Bob Huang list, and I've had a lot more success against pile by playing stifle. However, I dont think stifle is good enough right now against everything else. Any tips on this matchup with the stock Bob Huang list? I'm playing in a legacy GP shortly. Thanks!
A couple of Wastelands can be devastating for the opponent. Use what you see from Gitaxian Probe to inform your decision on what to hit with Wastelands. I generally like to attack their splash colours (red/green) because they usually have a basic Swamp and a basic Island, as well as an abundance of other blue and black sources of mana, making it tough to cut them on those colours. However, you may be able to cut them on black mana occasionally, so if you sense weakness, cutting them on black can cause problems.

True-Name Nemesis and Gurmag Angler are your best threats. You want to make sure that they resolve. Strix is really annoying so let delvers fight strixes then deploy Gurmag Angler. You definitely want Baleful Strixes to stay off the board as they are mainly what allows them to stabilize against a fast start. Young Pyromancer can be very good if your opponent has run out some removal to take care of your Deathrites and Delvers already, and can quickly overwhelm your opponent.

Aim to close the game quickly. If you give them time, you will lose that fight. They have far more ways of grinding out card advantage and stabilizing then you can handle in the late game. You are aiming to pressure them with early threats and protect them while clearing the way of any stupid Baleful Strixes and you want to capitalize on an early advantage with a Gurmag Angler or True-Name Nemesis or even an unanswered Young Pyromancer.

Edit: You could play Bitterblossom or Price of Progress in the sideboard if you are looking for high impact cards to bring in in that matchup.

Good luck at the GP!

[eyeownyu]

A couple of Wastelands can be devastating for the opponent. Use what you see from Gitaxian Probe to inform your decision on what to hit with Wastelands. I generally like to attack their splash colours (red/green) because they usually have a basic Swamp and a basic Island, as well as an abundance of other blue and black sources of mana, making it tough to cut them on those colours. However, you may be able to cut them on black mana occasionally, so if you sense weakness, cutting them on black can cause problems.

True-Name Nemesis and Gurmag Angler are your best threats. You want to make sure that they resolve. Strix is really annoying so let delvers fight strixes then deploy Gurmag Angler. You definitely want Baleful Strixes to stay off the board as they are mainly what allows them to stabilize against a fast start. Young Pyromancer can be very good if your opponent has run out some removal to take care of your Deathrites and Delvers already, and can quickly overwhelm your opponent.

Aim to close the game quickly. If you give them time, you will lose that fight. They have far more ways of grinding out card advantage and stabilizing then you can handle in the late game. You are aiming to pressure them with early threats and protect them while clearing the way of any stupid Baleful Strixes and you want to capitalize on an early advantage with a Gurmag Angler or True-Name Nemesis or even an unanswered Young Pyromancer.

Edit: You could play Bitterblossom or Price of Progress in the sideboard if you are looking for high impact cards to bring in in that matchup.

Good luck at the GP!
Thanks for all the info. Could you tell me generally what you board out and in? At first I was cutting all my forces, but then I kept losing to deluge and marsh casualties in the late game, so I figured I should leave in 2 forces. Usually I only have 4-5 cards to bring in 2 lavamancers, 2 pyroblast, and a price (if I have it in my board). I take out 2 forces, then I shave probes and dazes.

Is grudge any good? Gets through multiple strix.

[TheManWithaPlan]

Thanks for all the info. Could you tell me generally what you board out and in? At first I was cutting all my forces, but then I kept losing to deluge and marsh casualties in the late game, so I figured I should leave in 2 forces. Usually I only have 4-5 cards to bring in 2 lavamancers, 2 pyroblast, and a price (if I have it in my board). I take out 2 forces, then I shave probes and dazes.

Is grudge any good? Gets through multiple strix.
I used to board in 1 Smash to Smithereens against Shardless when that was popular and I was playing more UR Delver. However, only 4 artifacts tops is not a great place for Ancient Grudge if the things you are aiming to Grudge are not Chalice. Staticaster is actually decent in this matchup if you have it. It is just able to freely gun down Strixes and keep them out of the way. Lavamancer is also great but gets killed a little easier than Staticaster and can't do anything the turn it comes in. It also guns down random Snapcasters that threaten to bock or attack you. I don't want to see Force of Will at all in this matchup. Against Deluge, you just have to play around it or play your way to a board state where deluge is trying to kill a Gurmag Angler and would drop their life total to a precariously low point. I like Flusterstorm as it is a cheap way to interact and early it is unstoppable. If you have Relic of Progenitus, that can be a fantastic sideboard card in this matchup. It eats away at their potential targets for Snapcaster Mage and helps you to win Deathrite Shaman wars. I have been running a split of Nihil Spellbomb and Relic lately but I think I am going to go back to 2 Relics.

My Current Sideboard
1x Abrade
1x Ancient Grudge
2x Baleful Strix
2x Cabal Therapy
1x Diabolic Edict
1x Flusterstorm
1x Izzet Staticaster
1x Nihil Spellbomb
2x Pyroblast
1x Relic of Progenitus
2x Surgical Extraction

In: 1 Relic, 1 Spellbomb, 1 Staticaster, 2 Pyroblast, 1 Flusterstorm
Out: 4 Force, 2 Daze

[funkymankevx]

Czech Pile seems to be doing quite well right now, what are people using in their board to combat these decks?
I was playing a Price of Progress in the side, but I'm not 100% if this is what I want in the board. I haven't played the match up as much as I would have liked and am trying to get an idea of other's experiences.

I'm currently on the Bob Huang build with two Spell Pierce main deck with the following side board:

1x Abrade
1x Ancient Grudge
3x Cabal Therapy
2x Diabolic Edict
1x Flusterstorm
1x Izzet Staticaster
2x Pyroblast
3x Surgical Extraction
1x Grim Lavamancer

[Stevestamopz]

Hey all,

What is the consensus on the Grixis Delver vs Turbo Depths matchup? I am being told it is extremely favoured for Grixis Delver but I do not agree at all.

[FGCmtg]

Hey all,

What is the consensus on the Grixis Delver vs Turbo Depths matchup? I am being told it is extremely favoured for Grixis Delver but I do not agree at all.

I thought the consensus was the opposite, it's generally rather tricky for Delver to interact with the Depths player assembling Marit Lage and they can do it very quickly and are quite resilient.

[TruKnightmare]

Hey all,

What is the consensus on the Grixis Delver vs Turbo Depths matchup? I am being told it is extremely favoured for Grixis Delver but I do not agree at all.

I’m about 90% against Turbo Depths. I usually have Surgical, Ancient Grudge/Abrade, Edicts and Izzet Staticaster in my sideboard for this matchup. I prioritize protecting my sideboard answers from their discard and try to keep the board clear to keep Edicts live. I’m also trying my best to Waste + Surgical.

[Druz91]

I’m about 90% against Turbo Depths. I usually have Surgical, Ancient Grudge/Abrade, Edicts and Izzet Staticaster in my sideboard for this matchup. I prioritize protecting my sideboard answers from their discard and try to keep the board clear to keep Edicts live. I’m also trying my best to Waste + Surgical.I guess staticaster is a little too narrow And mana intensive To properly work in a mu where fast answers to The combo are needed. Just leaving a couple of bolts together with abrade/s should be more than enough to cover such a situation.
By The Way i think The mu is Not as easy as someone could think because turbo depths Can Take grixis delver off guard many times due to its unexpected Speed to assemble its combo . Even after board, once You have The proper tools to fight It, The mu is Not something to underestimate too much.

Inviato dal mio SM-A300FU utilizzando Tapatalk

[Nonbo]

What if any adjustments are people making for team trios?

[IamHANDSOME]

I am playing Grixis Delver recently and the deck is a monster. It has sooo many outs people are not happing playing against me ^^ Anyway Im playing the list with 3 Pyromancer and 4 Probes because I don't have Stifle (yet), I noticed I have problems starting with either Delver or Shaman because of the 3 Volcanic Island. Does the deck really wanna play 3 Volcanic and 2 USea instead of 3 Usea and 2 Volcanic? I feel like Usea is much more powerful than Volcanic especially when I start making damage with 1-2 Shaman. Also Cabal Therapy needs USea when boarded so Id rather play 3 USea and 2 Volanics what do you think?

[eldub]

I've seen quite a few lists recently cutting the 8th fetch to allow 3 USea, 3 Volc, 1 Trop. There are quite a few red cards, especially in post-SB games.

[Plague Sliver]

Hey all,

What is the consensus on the Grixis Delver vs Turbo Depths matchup? I am being told it is extremely favoured for Grixis Delver but I do not agree at all.

from personal experience, it's 60-40 or 55-45 for Grixis Delver. Sometimes they can just go for it, especially in Game 1 when you have very little to answer them other than Force of Will for the Hexmage. The thing is, their plan doesn't really improve post-board so you should have a slight advantage.

It reminds me a bit of Dredge where it's more about what you do in games 2 and 3. Actually, Deathrite Shaman is a great card so sometimes you win Game 1s vs. Dredge...</digression>

Now traditional Lands...that's a tough matchup.

[Serch]

Is there a discord channel for this deck? Can anyone provide me an invitation? Thanks :)

[Stevestamopz]

So the consensus is that there is no consensus on Grixis Delver vs Turbo Depths :laugh::laugh:

[LewisCBR]

So the consensus is that there is no consensus on Grixis Delver vs Turbo Depths :laugh::laugh:

I'll break this tie, Turbo Depths is definitely a bad matchup for Grixis Delver. Just think about how G.Delver interacts... Counterspells, Bolts, and Wastelands. None of those are good vs Depths because they play 4 Needles and 4 Crop Rots for your Wastes, their spells are super redundant to beat CSpells, and Bolts dont do much at all vs an indestructible 20/20. Plus, they have discard to mess with anyway you might actually be able to stop them.

In fact, its a horrible matchup for Delver, in my experiences. Like, not even that close, you have to get pretty lucky to beat it; multiple Wastelands and dodging Neeldes kinda lucky.

[DNSolver]

Grixis Delver is a bye for Turbo Depths, unless you are playing Stifles. If you are playing Stifles and play them correctly, you can have a good chance on the play.

Edit: @TrueKnightMare, fight me any day. I fail to understand how Izzet Staticaster is going to be relevant.

[Stevestamopz]

I'll break this tie, Turbo Depths is definitely a bad matchup for Grixis Delver. Just think about how G.Delver interacts... Counterspells, Bolts, and Wastelands. None of those are good vs Depths because they play 4 Needles for your Wastes, their spells are super redundant to beat CSpells, and Bolts dont do much at all vs an indestructible 20/20. Plus, they have discard to mess with anyway you might actually be able to stop them.

In fact, its a horrible matchup for Delver, in my experiences. Like, not even that close, you have to get pretty lucky to beat it; multiple Wastelands and dodging Neeldes kinda lucky.

I could not agree more ^

[kombatkiwi]

I also find it a hard matchup for Delver from the few games I have played (I play RUG rather than Grixis, and Stifle helps, but apart from that both of these Delver decks look roughly the same from the Depths perspective I think)

[TruKnightmare]

I guess I’ve just gotten lucky with my mis-sideboarding against Turbo Depths when I’ve played it about the last 20 times 🤷🏻*♂️


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Agrippa91]

Well guys, I'm back after durdling in BUG land because I was frustrated about all the stupid lock pieces people play nowadays. I had to learn again that you just lose to Jace though when you're playing decays. And as it turns out BUG is still super durdly unless you have goyfs (which I don't) so I guess I'm back to Grixis again.

Something that struck me as worth a try is going up to 2 REB 2 Pyroblasts in the sideboard given how Miracles and Pile are some of the worst matchups for us (besides DD that is, but these decks aren't that popular). This might seem exaggerated, but look at Miracles: They know they can easily win against everything except blue decks so they pack in at least 4 blasts in their sideboard alongside their answers for Chalice and gy and pretty much call it a day.

Main reason is the resurgence of counterbalance and the 4strix.decks, but also search for azcanta which is just ridiculous, even if it doesn't flip. I just played against it a couple of times and the only time I won against a flipped one was when my opponent played Back to Basics and I managed to setup delver+bolt.

On the other hand I really want to try out 2 Bitterblossoms against these decks, I guess I could also bring them in vs. Hexdepths to stop their Marit Lage every turn xD

[JPoJohnson]

I want to start off by saying that I think DRS is a balanced card for Legacy.

Having said that, I’m curious if you didn’t have access to the card, what would you put in those four slots?

[Agrippa91]

I want to start off by saying that I think DRS is a balanced card for Legacy.

Having said that, I’m curious if you didn’t have access to the card, what would you put in those four slots?

Are we talking about Legacy without deathrite in general now? It doesn't make sense to discuss this in a vacuum imo. If deathrite got banned I'd probably go with Nimble Mongoose and RUG colors (maybe keeping pyromancer over goyfs because he's better against miracles and edict effects, besides I don't want to buy goyfs). Swiftspear is a horrible topdeck later and requires a very proactive cards to trigger prowess consistently while mongoose's value goes up with the loss of DRS. Anglers will be a problem, but I don't see any good lists playing Angler. Here's the thing: Banning drs will warp the format like no other ban has before. Suddenly about a dozen decks will be unplayable, not only 4c but also various BUG decks like Alluren and food chain. We'll be back to the days when stifle is a major competitor in the format which even I as someone who plays stifle don't want.

[JackaBo]

Are we talking about Legacy without deathrite in general now? It doesn't make sense to discuss this in a vacuum imo. If deathrite got banned I'd probably go with Nimble Mongoose and RUG colors (maybe keeping pyromancer over goyfs because he's better against miracles and edict effects, besides I don't want to buy goyfs). Swiftspear is a horrible topdeck later and requires a very proactive cards to trigger prowess consistently while mongoose's value goes up with the loss of DRS. Anglers will be a problem, but I don't see any good lists playing Angler. Here's the thing: Banning drs will warp the format like no other ban has before. Suddenly about a dozen decks will be unplayable, not only 4c but also various BUG decks like Alluren and food chain. We'll be back to the days when stifle is a major competitor in the format which even I as someone who plays stifle don't want.

I absolutely agree with this. The value of wasteland stifle and mongoose will go up. The Power of black-based controll will go down.