Quote Originally Posted by rlesko View Post
When are you guys typically bringing in ghost quarter?
In general any deck with a few basics or a greedy manabase. I personally bring one in against elves since you need to kill cradles asap and they usually fetch out their forests anyways, i'm not sure about ANT still (I would 100% never bring them in against TES) and it's very hard to GQ out Skill and Show since if you are at that stage of the game you're probably winning anways and they can always shuffle back the lands via discarding Emrakul.

Quote Originally Posted by bakofried View Post
If you have a spell powerful enough that it forces the opponent to concede on the spot, I don't think it's wise to board it out. I don't know why you think it's a dead draw later, either; it's not like a late game Daze or Spell Pierce. Slamming that late in the game during the topdeck war has won me several games. Shutting off their ability to toss Bolts at the dome is critical.

*Edit
Additionally, boarding out Chalices doesn't mean that the Delver player will board out Grudges; they'll just assume you haven't drawn one. In that case they might start pointing those Grudges at your Diamonds, and THAT is how I lose games against Delver: when my mana is unstable.
Like I said I can see keeping in some number on the play. I understand that chalice is amazing against Grixis but I feel like their angles of attack are too varied to make chalice 100% reliable in games where they don't have a mono 1 drop hand. I've run into tons of situations where I am digging for answers but end up drawing chalice where any removal spell or creature would have been good enough. I would much rather be attacking their creature base where I know that I can just can overload on removal rather than rely on chalices sticking.

Most of the games that I lose aren't really to mana stability issues (although that does happen) it's more that my answers line up poorly with their threats e.g. I have a decay and fire against an Angler/TNN or just don't have an answer for a threat. If your opponent sees that they can stifle your mana via grudge wouldn't they be attacking the moxes anyways? You do save on 1 grudge activation by forcing them to hit the chalice but that just feels like more of a blowout.