I've never liked Stormchaser. If you want to be hyper aggressive, Goblin Guide is better. If you want a more powerful midgame threat, Young Pyromancer is better. Stormchaser's overall power level is lower than either of those two options.
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I've never liked Stormchaser. If you want to be hyper aggressive, Goblin Guide is better. If you want a more powerful midgame threat, Young Pyromancer is better. Stormchaser's overall power level is lower than either of those two options.
Anyone play this deck at Seattle and do well?
Played at the 66-player NRG Championship Trial today - failed to repeat a good performance, finished 3-3 this time around. A couple mistakes and some hands a little on the weaker side (mulled 10 out of 16 games). Puts me at 64% MWP in 28 paper matches since Jan 1 this year.
I felt pretty good about adding a Vapor Snag to the main when I did face Turbo Depths round 5, but I ended up not being able to find the 1-of in time. I was on 1 Vapor Snag main, and 1 Vapor Snag + 1 Submerge in the sideboard due to the popularity of that deck. I'm pretty set on that now, as it's a playable card in most matchups and answers things like Batterskull, Angler, and KotR reasonably well too.
Really hoping we don't see a Probe ban on Monday - I think that would be quite bad for the deck. It's possible some reconfiguration could work, maybe with Eidolons or something.
Is UR Delver so much worse then Grixis (or even BUG) variant? I haven't seen a deck had good results in tournaments for a couple a months. I really like tempo strategy and probably i will buy into UR Delver, but the fact that the deck is under the radar scares me a little bit.
I still stand positive to this day with Ur Delver against all other Delver versions though, I think Grixis and Ur are pretty even against each other. Its not that its weaker, it is just not as popular. Ur Delver has this HUGE advantage compared to all other Delver decks that it can run basics, Price of Progress and Blood Moon which punishes A LOT of decks right now and it plays so many burn spells in general it actually has a plan B when your opponent is on <10 life. The big downside of Ur is you have a limited card pool when it comes to your sideboard, I really miss Diabolic Edicts and Cabal Therapy. Grixis is currently the better choice because you have more important cards to use like Edict and be able to play discard against combo, also Shaman and Angler give you more options preboard. This is where Grixis shines compared to Ur. But this makes only a different in a large meta which consists of many different decks, so statistically Ur will be worse. If you are playing in your LGS most of the time and you enjoy playing Ur I would strongly recommend to buy into it, it is my favorite deck of all time by far (maybe together with old Zoo in 2010 ^^).Quote:
Originally Posted by Listlik
100% agree with IamHANDSOME. Obviously we are biased given that we're posting in this thread, but I believe UR is within a couple percentage points of Grixis Delver in terms of power, but just heavily underplayed. My gut sense is that Grixis has 4-5x the playerbase of UR at a given tournament due to its hype and notoriety.
If you like to play aggro-control/midrange and interact on a bunch of axes at once, Grixis is probably a better choice for you. If you like to prove to people that there is still a viable aggro deck in Legacy, UR is the best. I've been on UR as my main Legacy deck for 2.5 years now and it's still my all-time favorite Magic deck in any format.
Not sure what you have in terms of Legacy staples, but UR Delver is a great way to start investing in the format. It's a really fun deck too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Listlik
I agree. It is very cool deck to play (i played with proxy several times and my feelings about the games were just wonderful). For ur delver i have almost all cards except two FoW and Scalding Tarns (but it is not a problem even). The actual problem is hidden in Volcanic Islands. They are pretty expensive and i imagine is it possible to play with two copies or even without dual-lands (at the beginning of course). I know that shock-lands isnt a thing because Daze, so maybe i will try fetch+basics manabase.Quote:
Originally Posted by menloe
You can run literally a budget list with your current pool and you will still do super fine in your LGS:Quote:
Originally Posted by Listlik
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Monastery Swiftspear
3 Young Pyromancer
1 Stormchaser Mage
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Bedlam Reveler
1 True-Name Nemesis
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Daze
2 Force of Will
1 Spell Pierce
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Chain Lightning
2 Price of Progress
1 Fireblast
4 Scalding Tarn
3 blue fetchlands
2 red fetchlands
1 Volcanic Island
3 Island
3 Mountain
I'd say Scalding Tarn is the most important card you need to get. You will fetch on basics anyway in a lot of situations to stabilize your manabase in game and protect yourself from Wastelands so running it for 1-2 months like this with only 1 Volcanic is not even a huge problem. But Scalding Tarn is your most important land for Ur Delver for sure, you cannot play it without the playset! You can add up the Volcanics and replace 1 Mountain and 1 Island step by step. FoW is also something you don't need as a 4 of in every deck. Ive seen several people play 3 and do just fine, you board it out in mirrors and against fair matches anyway. I actually play often against a friend who plays no FoW preboard and has the whole playset in his board. It is a little bit weaker in the first place but if your meta does not really have a lot of combo decks it is totally fine to play it like this. Daze is the better counterspell most of the time.
So if you expect to play against Wasteland you can fetch on Basics right away, if you dont see any Wastelands you just fetch on your single Volcanic and are good to go. When you own 2 Volcanics you can also try to play 10 fetchlands, 2 Volcanics and 4 basics which is much closer to the original list.
That's a very compelling reason to play U/R Delver. Have you proxied Grixis? Did you have similar feelings about that deck? If yes, you can definitely treat U/R Delver as a stepping stone to Grixis as there's a high degree of overlap between the two decks on the expensive cards. All the cards you lack for U/R Delver transfer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Listlik
The thing to keep in mind is you'll get to a playable U/R Delver deck far quicker than Grixis if price is a concern. To reiterate and add to what IamHANDSOME said: U/R Delver is playable with just one Volcanic Island, which relieves a lot of the stress on your funds. The first Volcanic Island is the most important Volcanic Island, and the other two or three you get are a far lower priority than the Tarns, which, while certainly overpriced in terms of cardboard products, are still reasonable at around $70. There's upside too, since you are probably going to run some number of cards that punish decks with lots of dual lands and decisions based on what to fetch when. You can't cheat on the duals with Grixis since the mana in that deck is so shitty.
That's been my philosophy: get to the good playable deck first, and then gradually acquire the pieces that show people you care about what tier your deck is.
Also, you can probably scoop up that first Volcanic Island at HP for less than $300. You want old cards to have a little bit of stink to them. Mint cards are for the birds.
I'm currently working on an Rub Delver list which is the aggressive Ur version + black splash for the important sideboard cards and Gurmag Angler main. It plays better in our bad matchups but is worse in the decent and good matchups though. Biggest cons are that PoP and Fireblast are loosing some power, it does not race as fast. Pros are Gurmag Angler is normally better than TNN and Bedlam Reveler AND somehow easier to cast. The sideboard cards such as Diabolic Edict and Cabal Therapy are insane! I am still not sure if we want to splash black ONLY for the board cards or for Gurmag Angler also. Still testing this out. This is the current list:
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Monastery Swiftspear
1 Grim Lavamancer
3 Young Pyromancer
2 Gurmag Angler
1 True-Name Nemesis
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Chain Lightning
1 Forked Bolt
1 Price of Progress
1 Fireblast
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
3 Volcanic Island
1 Underground Sea
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Mountain
I played in this event two weeks ago and took down #1. I'm coming here not to just share this, but also to try to convince you all that prowess creatures are not the answer right now.
19 LANDS
2 Flooded Strand
3 Island
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
1 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland
13 CREATURES
4 Delver of Secrets
3 Grim Lavamancer
2 True-Name Nemesis
4 Young Pyromancer
28 INSTANTS and SORC.
4 Brainstorm
1 Chain Lightning
2 Chart a Course
4 Daze
1 Dead / Gone
4 Force of Will
1 Forked Bolt
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Ponder
1 Spell Pierce
2 Spell Snare
SIDEBOARD
3 Abrade
2 Flusterstorm
1 Invasive Surgery
2 Price of Progress
2 Pyroblast
2 Snapcaster Mage
1 Submerge
2 Surgical Extraction
Part of what I think is needed for Delver decks to do well right now is to capitalize on Tempo. Grixis uses DRS, BUG drops Hymn and Liliana, and UR is usually relegated to going face and hoping. The idea behind this decks is to reap the rewards of playing two colors and lots of basics, but to still have low tempo, high value cards to capitalize on early removal and counterspells. Grim Lavamancer is an amazing card, and especially so in a format where people are stilting their manabase off of Elf Shamans. An uncontested Lavaman is easily a win vs fair decks, shoring up some usually annoying matchups like DnT or Elves.
As far as other threats go, Young Peezy isn't really much of an innovation, but the synergy with the other oddball pick of Chart a Course is crucial. Chart capitalizes on the random elementals you have around and over the course of the whole tournament, always either drew me 2 cards to refuel, or helped me dig for answers in a matchup where I don't need value. If you're not going to go all in with your damage, you need cards like Chart to keep you in longer games.
Initially, the Snapcasters were in the main deck fulfilling this role, but TNN is the last key element for success. One major problem we've all felt is when you get your opponent low, but then they start dropping Flickerwisps or Knight of the Reliquary and you're never getting a hit in with a creature for the rest of the game. TNN provides that sustained damage in a shell that also survives Lands or other decks based on recurring removal. The reach of Bolt Snap Bolt is sexy, but better reserved to games 2 and 3 vs decks that Snap Flusterstorm is worth sitting a turn with 3 mana untapped.
I also want to mention that this started months back as a list much like IamHANDSOME's, with Cabal Therapy instead of fish as the payoff for a single Underground splash. While cool, I do think that part of the appeal of aggro in UR should be the consistency and wasteland immunity and that path basically leads back to Grixis.
I played this list a lot and could never make decent results with it. Main problems are youre most of the time to slow to race control and combo and you also loose the mirrors because you cannot accelerate trough Deathrite Shaman. Its crazy that this deck plays slower and a more controlish style compared to Grixis Delver and does less at the end because you don't have the best black cards. The best starts are definitely Delver, leading T2 with either Pyromancer & Probe or Lavamancer. If you don't start like this you allready "lost" the game by not doing anything, also Wasteland is a card you do not want to draw in that situation because it Time Walks you also. All of this problems are non exisiting if you have Deathrite Shaman in play. So congrats to your tournament win but I dont see a future in that list currently :( I work on the opposite side currently, giving the fast Swiftspear list a black splash to generate more card value postboard especially against combo decks. The manabase gets more fragile which I don't like but Gurmag Angler, Cabal Therapy and Diabolic Edict is a sweet thing to gain.Quote:
Originally Posted by structuremole
I have the opposite opinion. If you want to play tempo, splashing black is the superior choice because of the much better tools that you have access to. Those better tools overshadow any gains you're getting by having a better manabase.Quote:
Originally Posted by structuremole
The strengths of UR is that it is far more aggressive than the tempo versions of Delver. That's the niche this deck has over Grixis. You sacrifice sone percentage points in the unfair matchups to significantly improve your fair matchups. Granted, I play R/u Sligh, which takes this concept to the extreme, but still. By being hyper aggressive and burn heavy, 50/50 coinflip matchups turn into favorable ones. Matchups like Czech Pile, Delver, and D&T become much better, whereas matchups like Storm and Br Reanimator become worse. However, given that a significantly larger portion of the meta is playing fair decks as opposed to unfair decks, it makes that decision fantastic for the current metagame.
If you're not being hyper aggressive with UR, I see no reason to play this deck over Grixis Delver.
Yeah this is kind of the point when it comes to Ur. Its the best when played extremely aggressively and fast. You are able to race pretty much any deck with the Delver, Swiftspear and Burn plan. If you take this away you have a worse Grixis list imo with a much smaller card pool to use.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hanni
You guys raise a lot of points, so I'll address them in ascending order of importance:
First, DRS is NOT a problem for you. You are 68% (I calculated) to either have an immediate removal spell for T1 DRS or to be playing first and play T1 lavamancer. I specifically put "way too much removal" so as to 'fix' this problem. As for my own threats, DRS is a paltry threat compared to the others I'm playing, and I haven't tested enough, but I don't think mana acceleration for the deck is the problem. Basically it'd just free up the 19th land slot.
Second, lets talk about the nebulous "other black cards" that get thrown around. First off, Grixis does not play black cards, they play black threats and have a black sideboard. These sideboard cards do have more options, but in general, we're talking about only 3 big ones: Cabal Therapy, Diabolic Edict, and Marsh Casualties. I do these cards are better cards than we have available in UR, but there's a secret sideboard card we have that they're giving up to play them: Island. This makes matchups where Edict are boarded in much more playable (other than TNN ones, but I'll address than later), and some Grixis decks are even splitting on Dead//Gone, so there's one down. I also personally think that the 3 Lavamen main make non-TNN matchups that Casualties is good for (Elves, DnT, Grixis Control) already good matchups, so that minimal sideboard of wanting the value of a sweeper can just come from Snapcaster (hopefully on forked bolt). I've even had Electrickery in the board before which I think is usually a better card most of the time (I swapped it for this event with 3rd Abrade). I've talked about DRS, but to briefly address Gurmag, I think it's a good card and usually about as unkillable as TNN, but it and Lavamancer are mutually exclusive and the latter is integral to the deck's gameplan of going long.
You've probably noticed two things so far. One is that I completely skipped Cabal Therapy and that is because I think it's the one card I can't replace in this list. I have played the list with Therapy before and it has made a laughing stock of combo lists (here and here for two takes on the decklist) but I really felt like it was always more important vs fair decks to have the extra island and more of your graveyard committed to use by Lavaman. I've definitely had to hedge with Spell Snare (pierce just being a difficult card to use, maindeck) but I've been happy with that card across the field, so I think I'm fine giving up Therapy.
The second thing is that I've said many times that "X is replaced by Y for me (except vs TNN)" and, in general, basically treated TNN like not a problem. To be clear, I think that is true, but it probably won't make sense without addressing the last issue I've had with the points you're raising which is: "isn't the gameplan of UR to go FAST? Why wouldn't you play the faster threats?" Here's what I think the game plan is for the three decks we've been talking about:
UR Delver: Kill Fast, Race your opponent, Die if you run out of resources
Grixis Delver: Kill slowly with one threat, Deny your opponents resources (specifically spells and mana), Die if their better creatures stick or you yourself get mana denied.
My Deck: Kill just as (ideally before) your opponent gets their plan online, Trade cards to win the board (do not race!), Die if you run out of threats.
I think it's very important first and foremost that Grixis is NOT an aggro deck. That is why none of us want to play it and also why it never seems to work splashing black cards. Both DRS and Gurmag are slow cards that are useful by number of turns kept in play. Grixis wants its board to win, but since it doesn't want to play removal other than bolt, it decides to 'cheat' and make sure you can't play enough creatures to compete.
UR is on the other extreme. I don't think I need to waste my time 'mansplaining' your deck to you, so I'll hope that we're on the same page. Specifically when it comes to the idea of "racing your opponent".
So, what am I saying that my gameplan is? I've grabbed a lot of elements from both sides which have pretty disparate plans, but it wasn't because I wanted to do two disparate things and hope they line up well, but because I think I've found a good midpoint. I think it's important to be the aggro deck. There's a lot to be gained from the knowledge that your deck kills faster than your opponent that effects the flow of the game and I've specifically chosen cards like Forked bolt (over electrickery) and Chain lightning (for Leovold, lets say over pyroblast) because the ability to go face with your removal is part of what makes UR work as an archetype. A deck playing fatal push has to try very hard to be the aggro deck and most of that is getting lucky that your opponent plays just as much creatures you need to remove as you have removal.
However, there is one important part about legacy but also magic in general that make it so that you can't just make a straightforward build for this gameplan alone, and that is that there will always be decks at every speed of play possible, meaning that there will be enough decks faster than yours that you need to address them and there'll be decks slow enough that you need to beat the interaction they're bound to be packing. Combo decks rule the realm of "aggro" in legacy. Obviously Belcher will be faster in a goldfish battle than anyone around, but also Storm and Reanimator which have interaction to defend themselves that you need to respect. In addition, Burn will always be faster than UR delver by sheer principle so obviously there's a reason we're not trying to be as fast as possible. Different people describe this in different ways, and mostly by talking about consistency, but I think the real reason we slow ourselves down is to give ourselves the tools to beat anyone faster than us. This probably isn't revelatory for anyone and if you haven't, I think it should be required reading that everyone reads Who's The Beatdown, but I want you to keep this in mind for the next part.
Lets not see the other side of things. For the rest of the format (the other 'half'), WE are the faster deck and they have specifically packed tools to try and beat us. So, how do we fight the other side of this battle? The first thing I think is important is trying to "match pace" instead of "race". What I mean by this is that Brainstorm and Ponder give us an insane control over which part of our deck we draw on any given turn, so instead of using that to see the minimum lands and maximum aggression, instead I want to use it to see the minimum threats and maximum interaction. By "match pace" I mostly mean that if you have a threat on board and they haven't assembled their threat/denial engine, you are winning. And, specifically, you don't need to win fast from that point, you just need to maintain it. Cards like Lavaman, Spell Snare, and Wasteland are very good at slowing down your opponent because they require you to spare very little from your personal deployment to use. Cards like YoungP are important by virtue of how strong a threat they are for a single card. This is where I hope to explain why I think that TNN isn't a problem for this deck because it is too slow despite the fact that we too are playing it because if you can play the wasteland game while your opponent can (we have more than enough basics to cast TNN) and if you only need to disrupt just so much as an unbeatable threat (TNN, KotR, Batterskull) doesn't come down and not complete denial, then you just get to have higher mana cost cards than your opponent. This is why I specifically focus on threat quality and disruption and leave the minimum cards for reach while sideboarding PoP because I think that it is only such decks as this card beats (Pile, Lands, Maverick) actually can deal with your threats in time to not just die to Bolt, Bolt. This is why, I board in Snapcaster in almost every matchup, but just for different cards boarded out, because I want to have staying power, I don't want to just lose when I start topdecking and my opponent isn't dead. Instead, the only games I lose are ones where I have and maintain control, but there's no creature down hitting for 3 a turn. This is why I need to forgo Swiftspear and Stormchaser mage (yuck) because a lot of the time you don't want to actually play spells unless you have to, and in that case you want your threat to be just as effective as if you did.
I know this seems like kind of a word dump (because it is), but I really think that there's a better Delver deck out there than a lot of what's considered 'standard' and part of it is thinking harder about what you're actually trying to do with a deck built around the best single (single mana) threat in magic (and no, I don't mean Phyrexian Dreadnaut ;) )
No one said DRS was a problem for this deck; the deck runs 8+ spot removal not counting Fireblast (12+ in my Sligh list). The point is that playing DRS yourself is much stronger than not if you are attempting to play the tempo role, because it lets you get ahead of your opponent on mana development. When you are playing threats like YP and TNN, being ahead on mana is significant, especially when you want to also be casting Daze and using Wasteland.Quote:
Originally Posted by structuremole
Black offers more than enough tools to make the splash significantly better than having a couple of basic lands.
Marsh Casualties is much better than Electrickery because it deals with multiple Mother of Runes and TNN in a way that Electrickery cannot.
Most Grixis lists run 5-6 removal spells, not 4. Look again.
I agree that Lavamancer is a great threat for this deck. I agree that this deck shouldn't really need to worry about opposing TNN.
I believe that you are wrong about the speed difference between this deck and Burn. Burn has a number of slower clunky draws, and usually has a turn 4 goldfish. UR Delver is roughly the same speed. My Ru Sligh list goldfishes on turn 3 far more consistently than Burn does; it goldfishes on turn 3 more frequently than not... in other words, it's much faster than Burn.
I also disagree with your assessment of keeping pace. You don't beat decks like Czech Pile, Maverick, or D&T by keeping pace. You beat these decks by getting underneath them and killing them before they can employ their far more powerful late game plans. That's the reason why I advocate for Ru Sligh over UR Delver, although I understand that comes at the expense of worse matchups against unfair decks.
Has anyone else who has been unsatisfied with Stormchaser Mage and YP tried out Firebrand Archer in more burn heavy lists?
It is obviously more of a liability in it’s ability to play defense, but in general defense is not where you want to be.
It has some Pro’s and Con’s. One of the bigger upsides is that you get damage from your counters and brainstorms on your opponents turn when that's necessary, which is nice. It’s obviously less good at just straight attacking without spells being involved, as you won’t be just hasting in for 1 as much, but you also won’t just get blown out by removal if you have to go in on combat harder.
Costing 2 is pretty bad compared to swiftspear, though I agree with you that being more protected from removal is very good. Compared to YP at 2 mana, though, it's significantly less damage as elementals get in there each turn. I think the real problem, though, is 1 toughness, but you should obviously still test it to get direct results to confirm.Quote:
Originally Posted by ReAnimator
I was mostly talking about DRS at all because of the person above you:Quote:
Originally Posted by Hanni
As for the rest, I wasn't trying to say a faster deck like Burn or your UR sligh list was a bad direction for UR delver given the tradeoffs which you do acknowledge, just that anything less than full aggro needs more serious modifications than just throwing in some young pyromancers and some 1 mana counterspells.Quote:
I played this list a lot and could never make decent results with it. Main problems are youre most of the time to slow to race control and combo and you also loose the mirrors because you cannot accelerate trough Deathrite Shaman.
I think you and I are going to have to disagree on how useful DRS is for aggro as I think getting ahead on Mana is something that specifically drives grixis delver to more midrange-y draws, and I think the UR delver list is fine playing its cards out slower, but at the right moment for maximum effect. By matching pace, this is what I meant, that you don't need to play out your cards as fast as possible, just faster than your opponent so you can answer their threats 1 for 1 while having a moment every few turns to develop threats as well. I specifically played 3 matches vs Maverick (2 being the same person twice, once in top 8) and while it is nice to have the draw where two delvers flip and kill them on turn 4, I was much happier the rest of the games to have the consistency than I'd have been to have 2-3 more times I drew that fast draw without protection in my opening hand.
Hi, Long time Lurker here
I've been playing the Prowess version for the past 3 months, with decent succes at my local legacy weekly.
My current list looks like this:
4 Swiftspear
4 Delver
3 Stormchaser
2 Bedlam Reveler
4 Fow
4 Daze
4 Bolt
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Git Probe
3 Chain Lightning
2 Price of Progress
1 Vapor Snag
1 Fireblast
16 Lands
Sideboard:
2 Pyroblast
2 Flusterstorm
2 Smash to smithereens
2 Surgical extraction
1 Hydroblast
1 Sulfuric Vortex (Card is freaking awesome, but expensive)
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Price of Progress
2 Rough// Tumble
1 Vapor Snag
I have some questions, on how to Sideboard. I usually find myself wanting to bring in a lot of Cards, in each matchup, but not knowing what to cut.
The best example would be Abzan Maverick. The Cards I want in this matchup are:
+1 Grim Lavamancer
+2 Rough// Tumble
+1 Sulfuric Vortex
+1 Vapor Snag
+2 Smash to Smithereens
+1 Price of Progress
But what do I cut for them?
I usually cut 4 Fow against fair decks, but im very afraid of the Postboard Choke. I dont wanna cut any removal (obviously), Price of Progress is good, Bedlam is also good, cuz the games tend to go a little longer, Daze is nice aswell, especially if they Keep a one Land Deathrite hand. Im pretty lost on this, and would like some help.
Another strange matchup, that I run into fairly often at my local, is Pox. I have absolutley no idea, how to board against that deck, any advice?
What are the Cards you are most likley to trim in any given match?
The most common decks I face on a weekly Basis are:
SnS
Abzan Maverick
TES
Grixis Pyro (Bedlam Reveler insetad of Angler)
Pox
Elves
Punishing Dack/Thieves
Some Chalice Deck (Changes alot. I've seen everything from Eldrazi or Moon Stompy, to Aggro Loam and Bomberman)
Do you guys think that my Sideboard is reasonable for this Meta, or would you make drastic changes to it?
I'm still learning the deck myself, so I don't have specific SB advice but I play the standard 15 card list with 1 Thunderous wrath (which just wins games)
I've been thinking about squeezing in an echoing truth in the board as extra removal / jank-protection. It makes sense because at a local level people will play more budget-oriented/nostalgic decks instead of the usual blue piles (as you've seen)
I was thinking about switching flusterstorm for spell pierces since I haven't seen any fast combo, but tons of chalice decks. However you have SnS and TES so perhaps that's not the best decision.
As for the Maverick match up, daze does a reasonable lotus petal impression if choke comes down.
against Maverick you can go for 4 FoW and 1-2 Gitaxian Probe to not loose to much of life if you face a 7/7 Knight. Also I dont know how good mass removal is against it, you might consider not boarding these in.
Oli4: I play both UR delver and Pox. For this matchup, I think bringing in Pithing Needle (planeswalker, cursed scroll), Winter Orb, & Flusterstorm (discard effects) would be good. Burn them sooner rather than later.
Hello there,
We have this poor man's legacy format running at our local game shop, and the meta has become flooded with fast red decks, most notably burn and goblins.
I find the Burn matchup quite hard on my U/R Delver list, since it's not as fast and cards like searing blood can turn the tides quickly
This is my current list:
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Monastery Swiftspear
3 Young Pyromancer
2 Bedlam Reveler
1 Cryptic Serpent
--------------------------------
4 Brainstorm
3 Chain Lightning
1 Chart a Course
1 Counterspell
4 Daze
2 Forked Bolt
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Ponder
2 Spell Pierce
--------------------------------
2 Steam Vents
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Thunderous Wrath
1 Wooded Foothills
3 Island
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Polluted Delta
3 Mountain
1 Flooded Strand
Sideboard:
1 Abrade
2 Dragon's Claw
1 Echoing Truth
3 Hydroblast
1 Izzet Staticaster
1 Negate
1 Pyroblast
1 Pyrokinesis
1 Rough / Tumble
1 Smash to Smithereens
1 Spell Pierce
1 Sulfuric Vortex
I've tried a prowess list before to try and outrace the burn decks, with stormchasers and cards like fireblast and unstable mutation, but i'm having slightly more sucess with a more resilient list with more removal and late-game threats.
Problem is that cards like price of progress and blood moon do little to nothing in my meta, so i wonder if there's better strategies to win against fast mono red decks without getting too vulnerable to other midrange and control decks?
I mean, the best way to outrace aggro decks, ist to play combo. SnS shares almost all the expensive cards with UR delver (Forces, Tarns and Volcs), so maybe you should look into that. I don't think that you can really outrace Burn with UR Delver, we trade speed for consistency and a better combo matchup. You can also look into cheaper combo decks, like BR Reanimator, and Turbo Depths, which should both do pretty well in your meta. You can play Cabal Therapy instead of Thoughtseizes, since your meta is burn heavy anyway, and it will also save you some $$$.
If you really want to keep playing UR Delver, I would suggest to play at least 2 Grim Lavamancers, because they are really really good to kinda slow down the pressure of Burns creatures. Also, if your meta is really that full of burn, you might wanna consider playing a few Hydroblasts main deck. Flusterstorm is also a great cheap and efficient counter. And if you really want to screw with your opponent, you can try out some spice like counterbalance.
Of course it is hard if you play Steam Vents instead of Volcanic Island. You can still beat Burn but without the real lands its gonna be much harder. Are you allowed to play proxies at your event? That would help a lot. Otherwise your list looks fine. I would recommend to play more basics and cut the Reveler and Serpent because they require RR and UU which your manabase can not afford. The list should look more like this:Quote:
Originally Posted by GhoulDesecrator
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Monastery Swiftspear
3 Young Pyromancer
1-2 Grim Lavamancer
1 True-Name Nemesis
0-1 Bedlam Reveler
0-1 Stormchaser Mage
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Daze
2 Spell Pierce
1-2 Spell Snare
4 Lightning Bolt
2-3 Chain Lightning
1 Forked Bolt
1-2 Price of Progress
1 Fireblast
0-1 Thunerous Wrath
4 Scalding Tarn
3 blue fetchlands
2 red fetchlands
2 Steam Vents/Volcanic Island
3 Island
2 Mountain
The Sulfur Falls does not do anything if its your only land on the play so I would really cut it. Against Burn you board out first your Price of Progress and Gitaxian Probe. Your board in more counterspells and removal, anything which is better than PoP (which comes for 0) and Gitaxian Probe (which means shocking yourself against Burn). Also as mentioned before, Grim Lavamancer will help in this matchup because even if you can not counter Eidolon you can remove it for free with Lavamancer. This will make your list much better against Burn and aggressive decks.
Also you do NOT outrace Burn with Ur Delver. What you do is you use your ressources MUCH better and force him to a topdeck situation which you should be still on 6+ life at least. You do not attack with your Swiftspear, you wait and let your opponent attack with 2 Goblin Guide for example, while blocking you Bolt on Goblin, Swiftspear gets Prowess and the other Goblin Guide dies to a 2/3. The board is clear and you setup Swiftspear to swing next turn back for 2 at least while Pondering or Brainstorming for a an other counterpell or removal. The only card which can outrace Burn is a flipped Delver. If its not on the board T1 you are not likely to outrace Burn. Keep in mind that all the creatures except Eidolon you should let resolve because you have a lot of removal spells, save your counter spells for their Burn spells like Bolt and Fireblast.
What good mass removal is in U or R? I run Electrickery but was wondering what others you might use.Quote:
Originally Posted by IamHANDSOME
I'm also a Mav player so I'm curious for that reason too :cool:
Rough// Tumble. Only Thing on our side that dies, is unflipped Delver.
Thanks for the insightful advice!
The mana base is indeed the weakest point in my list, since good lands cost so much. I'm considering adding a couple of spirebluff canals to increase turn 1-2 consistency. If i'm not mistaken, there was a list that made top 8 last year with a similar budget mana base with spirebluff's and sulfur falls.
One idea i'm also considering is a single misdirection maindeck. It is a 2 for 1, but i can see it working in situations like redirecting a bolt to remove their creatures (and not taking damage to eidolon), and in the late game it can feed on the useless dazes.
RE: mass removal - I've played a lot of different options over the past few years with the deck, and have settled on 1x Pyrokinesis and 1x Sudden Demise as the best asymmetric sweepers. I need asymmetry because I'm on 2x Grim Lavamancer and 1x True-Name Nemesis, both of which are excellent in the matchups where you want sweepers, so I wouldn't board them out. If you are on Young Pyromancer, the need for asymmetry is even more acute.
I bring in Sudden Demise against the go-wide decks like Elves and other tribals (plus TES/Belcher and some other oddball cases). Pyrokinesis comes in for the same but is also an all-star against D+T and Maverick.
I'm also curious about pyrokinesis, but I worry that red cards are actually much more painful to pitch by card quality than blue cards for force of will.
This guy in thailand got into top 8 with a UR Delver list running 2 Meditate mainboard and 2 Stifle, opinions on his strategy? i never even considered meditate.
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=19153&d=321083&f=LE
Ur Delver Meditate by Sukij Nonta:
18 LANDS
1 Arid Mesa
4 Flooded Strand
2 Island
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Volcanic Island
12 CREATURES
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Grim Lavamancer
3 True-Name Nemesis
3 Young Pyromancer
30 INSTANTS and SORC.
4 Brainstorm
1 Chain Lightning
4 Daze
1 Dismember
4 Force of Will
1 Forked Bolt
2 Gitaxian Probe
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Meditate
3 Ponder
1 Spell Pierce
1 Spell Snare
2 Stifle
SIDEBOARD
3 Abrade
1 Dismember
2 Flusterstorm
1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Pithing Needle
2 Pyroblast
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Snapcaster Mage
2 Surgical Extraction
After you meditate what exactly do you do? I mean you won't have mana, just hope for the best xD?
I was wondering that too. That tournament is apparently fake, reported with the intention of making meditate spike: https://imgur.com/a/AQx6nA9
It was confirmed fake https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...7848f48a1f.jpg
Volcanic Spray is pretty cool, although I'm not sure that this deck is necessarily in the market for that sort of effect. Grim Lavamancer and Forked Bolt, in addition to the standard Bolt package, tends to do a good job of preventing opponent's from amassing multiple tiny creatures.Quote:
Originally Posted by menloe
Anyone have any success at gp this past weekend?
I went 4-0 at my local weekly last night, just decided to put together the following list because I wanted to play my stifles, but not play grixis. The resulting deck was quite interesting, it getting to play basics, stifle/daze/pierce/wasteland, probe and yp, delver and tnn, were all good things in various match ups. I understand that maybe this deck isn't the same UR delver deck discussed in this thread, but I thought it was worth sharing and this looks like the best place for it.
2-1 Aggro Loam
2-0 Moon Stompy
2-0 Elves
2-0 BUG Shadow
MD
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Stifle
2 Spell Pierce
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Young Pyromancer
2 True-Name Nemesis
1 Grim Lavamancer
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Forked Bolt
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Flooded Strand
4 Volcanic Island
2 Island
1 Mountain
4 Wasteland
SB
2 Pyroblast
2 Flusterstorm
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Abrade
1 Null Rod
1 Izzet Staticaster
1 Sudden Demise
1 Sulfuric Vortex
1 Winter Orb
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Grafdigger's Cage
Nice list! I've had trouble with stifle, especially vs DnT heavy metas which I'm mostly playing in, but I also understand it as a pet card. You should take a quick look at my list up the thread a bit as it's a similar departure from the standard list as you have. Major differences (other than stifle) is not playing g probe to make mulligain decisions better, make racing opponents easier, and just because redundancy isn't really a problem. Cards you should try are spell snare and chart a course. The first is usually a better utility 1c counter than spell pierce (though I still play 1) just because it hits creatures (and chalice!) but still lots of impactful cards vs non-sneak combo. The second is just such good value, especially since elemental tokens are usually a cheap enough resource to just send in there. Otherwise I just play a different balace of what you've already got there.
If you wanna try something that still has the fun 'gotcha' factor as stifle, try checking out disrupt which is less dead and can usually cycle itself at very worst.