I remember days when I feared Sinkhole more than any card. The sheer power of LD for 2 mana shocked me to my shoes, and I always had to consider if my hand could survive a Sinkhole and Wasteland in my meta. Lately this card has fallen out of favor, but an angel may have just fallen to save it. True-Name Nemesis is a real boss on the board, finishing reliably and blocking robustly. He's exactly the thing to fix U/B, where Delver was never truly enough alone, and I think he rewards a disruptive gameplan.
3 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
3 Dark Confidant
3 True-Name Nemesis
2 Snapcaster Mage
3 Thoughtseize
2 Disfigure
1 Diabolic Edict
4 Brainstorm
3 Force of Will
3 Daze
2 Spell Pierce
4 Sinkhole
3 Stifle
4 Wasteland
4 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
1 Swamp
2 Marsh Flats
2 Polluted Delta
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Bloodstained Mire
I don't think the list is perfect yet, but I think it's mostly correct. True-Name Nemesis takes pressure off other cards to always perform, simply because it always does itself. You've gotta think about what that does for the other cards in your deck, and how to approach that in deckbuilding. This deck aims to disrupt 100%, harder than any deck in the format, through Stifle/Waste/Sinkhole. Hopefully after finding success in that, we either bury them with Confidant and Snapcaster, or kill them with evasive lightning bolts. Deathrite Shaman is terrific in a LD deck like this, because it compounds the advantage we're aiming for, and accelerates perfectly. 2 Disfigure is risky, but I'm taking the chance. I need it to stop so much at 1cc and 2cc (Lackey,Grim,Deathrite,Noble,Mom). The curve on this deck is so low that it only runs 20 lands, leaving room for 25 spells, and 15 creatures. Dark Confidant plays very nicely with Sinkhole, as does a turn 1 Delver. I can run down so many ridiculous lines of play, because the deck is super consistent in what it's trying to do. You're in 2 colors, and you have everything you need there.
Obviously it's not all sunshine and roses, but it's as strong as I've seen U/B in ages. True-Name Nemesis is really special, a blocker we sorely needed.
4 Sink/4 Waste/3 Stifle makes 11 LD cards. That's 13 with Snapcasters, so over half of what most decks run in lands total!
I think Sinkhole/Stifle/Deathrite + Wasteland is precisely what True-Name Nemesis wants. Mana advantage removes the 3cc drawback inherant in Nemesis. So, LD stalls the game, and evasion dudes clean up.
This color scheme has recieved alot of love from wizards lately, that's for sure...
Last edited by troopatroop; 10-30-2013 at 02:10 AM.
Dark Confidant just draws removals, and Deathrite Shaman is better at it. Also, I'd play Lilliana instead of Edict.
On the Sep 2011 Ban List Updates,
Originally Posted by Lancer
Stifle seems better then hymn and far more flexible and tempo oriented
I would definitely test heavily with Stifle and Liliana before writing them off. Liliana can just win, and a well timed Stifle can even turn an opposing True-Name Nemesis into an expensive bear. Like the list, and I respect the valiant effort to bring back Sinkhole.
4 Delver of Secrets
3 Dark Confidant
4 True-Name Nemesis
2 Snapcaster Mage
4 Sinkhole
3 Thoughtseize
4 Brainstorm
2 Diabolic Edict
3 Force of Will
2 Spell Pierce
4 Daze
3 Stifle
4 Wasteland
4 Underground Sea
1 Watery Grave
1 Swamp
1 Island
4 Polluted Delta
1 Marsh Flats
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Flooded Strand
1 Bloodstained Mire
Changed the list to support Stifle, and wow does it improve the deck. When things go right, your opponent can't do anything, and your Confidants just draw more LD. I can't believe I tried to run Sinkhole without it before! xD
How can a stifle turn TNN into a 2/2 bear?
3 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
3 Dark Confidant
3 True-Name Nemesis
2 Snapcaster Mage
3 Thoughtseize
2 Disfigure
1 Diabolic Edict
4 Brainstorm
3 Force of Will
3 Daze
2 Spell Pierce
4 Sinkhole
3 Stifle
4 Wasteland
4 Underground Sea
1 Bayou
1 Swamp
2 Marsh Flats
2 Polluted Delta
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Bloodstained Mire
New and improved list, Updating the OP with more info.
unfortunately you can't. its not an activated or triggered ability.
I and my Beta Sinkholes endorse this thread. There was an Esper LD list I played a while ago which might provide some food for your thoughts:
http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/dec...2&iddeck=53861
Nowhere near as tempo as where you're taking this, and also before Deathrite Shaman, but it shows that LD can be effective if given heavy focus.
Good luck!
Dunno how that deck was able to run both hymm and sinkhole with that manabase... It seems unreliable.
One observation from testing very similiar build, all comon tempo decks (RUG, BURG, UWR) have ultimate answer vs sinkhole in main already, daze. Sinkhole is useless most of the time against these decks.
Sinkhole is useless in this format in 2013. That's a proven and estabilished fact, and one should abandon completely nostalgia and let it go. A card devoted to destroy a land is silly when for the same mana you can play a super-efficient creature or use those to combo your opponent off. There's a reason why it was dropped early in 2010, and TNN won't be the reason it could be viable again.
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Sinkhole is better than Stoneforge Mystic against the Combo that runs rampant in our format? It's better than Tarmogoyf after your opponent mulligans, and I don't think the card has BEEN properly re-evaluated. That being said, you're pretty much correct. What about Hymn to Tourach instead? It's equally strong against combo, sucks pretty hard topdecking it, but then again so does Sinkhole.
How about including Phyrexian Dreadnought in this list? You're playing Stifle and you're following a tempo plan. Seems like it would fit in here.
I think this deck is a lot stronger than people are giving it credit for. I was messing around with a UB delver deck based on an old Sam Black list, but it didn't quite have the punch to get there in the end. I think TNN changes that, and going the hardcore land destruction route with DRS seems like a winning strategy. I like your list, though I made a few changes that I wanted to test out:
3 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Phantasmal Image
2 True-Name Nemesis
2 Snapcaster Mage
2 Dismember
1 Diabolic Edict
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Shadow of Doubt
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
2 Spell Pierce
3 Sinkhole
4 Stifle
3 Wasteland
1 Voltrath's Stronghold
4 Underground Sea
1 Creeping Tarpit
1 Island
1 Swamp
2 Marsh Flats
3 Polluted Delta
2 Misty Rainforest
I took out the Dark Confidants in part because I don't have them, and because I'm wary of Bob with Force of Will, though that could be incorrect. I also put shadow of doubt in there as an experiment, and upped stifle to 4, and sinkhole to 3. The reason for this was that stifle is cheaper and more versatile, whereas sinkhole has a greater chance of sitting in your hand and doing nothing. Phantasmal Image is hilarious with TNN, and the land hate package makes DRS into a complete nightmare. That said, I'm thinking of going up to the full compliment of snapcasters by taking out the Phantasmals, and maybe taking out the shadow of doubt to add a third TNN, and a 19th land; 18 seems a bit cheeky, and I think 3 TNN is really where this deck wants to be. It might even be worthwhile going 4 DRS, 4 Delver, 4 snapcasters, 3 TNN, and cutting a ponder.
Another route that might be worth exploring is BUG, by pulling the snapcasters, and adding 4 nimble mongoose, replacing dismember with abrupt decay, and adding 2 life from the loam for the wasteland lock. I don't think adding Phyrexian Dreadnought to the deck is a good idea, since it's a two card combo that is easily disrupted, and occasionally leads to you having dead cards. What's more, I don't feel like the deck really needs it.
If you want more LD, why not splash green and run Restore which basically reads "ramp up your mana unless there is a wasteland in a players graveyard, if so destroy target non basic land. Splashing green also allows you to run abrupt decay which is amazing.
I have the following list in mind
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
4 True-Name Nemesis
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
3 Restore
4 Abrupt Decay
4 Daze
4 Sinkhole
4 Stifle
3 Restore
3 Ponder
4 Wasteland
14 Lands.
Obviously 3 colors and only 14 colored lands is a bit wonky. . but that is currently what I'm testing - the occasional first turn stifle, second turn Waste third turn Restore - Waste are brutal.
I'm pro green splash as well, but after some testing, I feel like there are very very few situations where I draw TNN that I wouldn't be happier if it was Tarmogoyf. 3cc in a deck with this tight a manabase is pretty awkward. In most cases, by the time I'm resolving it, the game is basically decided. It's either win more or it doesn't get me there. The only upside to it, in my opinion, is that it pitches to FoW, which seems like a really bad reason to run it.
TNN's a great card, but I think it's going to be a lot stronger in a shell that takes better advantage of it by bolstering it with equipment. Or Unstable Mutations. Because Unstable Mutation is awesome.
The list I'm testing at the moment is:
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Brainstorm
2 Spell Pierce
4 Stifle
4 Daze
3 Force of Will
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Abrupt Decay
4 Wasteland
9 Fetch
3 Underground Sea
3 Bayou
my current list is looking like this:
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
3 True-Name Nemesis
2 Tombstalker
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
2 Spell Pierce
2 Dismember
2 Disfigure
1 Diabolic Edict
4 Stifle
3 Sinkhole
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
18 Lands (4 wastelands)
DRS is a house, if he's left on the board, you're automatically in a commanding position. Even if he gets removed, every single one of your creatures is a threat that absolutely needs to be answered, and with sinkhole, you disrupt land better than any other delver deck. Where the deck falls down is against strategies that rely on basic lands, since this turns off most of your land hate. That said, this is true of any delver deck. Tombstalker gets hit hard by RIP, but you can still rely on your other threats, and shuffle him away with brainstorm. If he lands, your opponent is in trouble. Same with TNN, which just keep on trucking through whatever your opponent has on the board.
DRS is really the glue that keeps the whole thing together. As long as he's alive, you can ramp out your TNN and still have mana to disrupt your opponent. Once you've established board position, he helps you burn down your opponent at a pretty astonishing rate. I'm still tossing up over whether I want the snapcasters or the tombstalkers. Snaps seem better against spell-based decks, but they're easier to answer on the board, and don't provide a clock on their own. Stalkers are more dangerous and harder to answer, since they beat down in the air. I'm thinking the more aggressive route is probably better.
This is what I've been trying out. I'm thinking about testing it out at a local tournament.
4 Baleful Strix
2 TNN
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Tombstalker
2 Liliana of the veil
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
1 Dismember
4 Force of Will
4 Stifle
3 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
4 Thoughtseize
2 Flooded Strand
2 Island
4 Polluted Delta
2 Swamp
4 Underground Sea
4 Wasteland
I like that list alot. Baleful Strix is far from bad, I like that it cantrips. It's like our Silvergill Adept. Seems strong with Liliana.
0 Deathrite shaman tho... I think that's hard to justify. Especially with Liliana in your deck to curve into, although i understand it's mediocre with Stifle.
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