I play three of each. The Cabal Therapy I am less sure about, but I think a mixture of it rarely being cast on turn one, as well as the fact that it can act as two discard spells simultaneously means that it is unnecessary to run more than three. The Young Pyromancer is easier, as that is a card that easily gets stuck in hand, especially in games where you do not have an active Deathrite Shaman (read: not that you do not have enough mana to cast it, but that there are other things in hand that are more powerful if you are unable to cast 2-3+ spells in one turn). And although playing Cabal Therapy and Young Pyromancer together is powerful, casting either of those cards individually with Gitaxian Probe is also quite strong. Personally though, I think the most powerful thing this deck does is play Deathrite Shaman. Playing multiple spells in one turn is generally where this deck wins the game and Deathrite Shaman enables those types of draws.Originally Posted by Hanni
Thanks for the read, that was indeed interesting. I especially appreciated the performance analysis, and I mostly agree with his assessment of the deck.
I am not sold on the Wasteland-less plan however, and I think he's a bit sloppy in his reasoning supporting it. He starts by saying that Wasteland is often the deciding factor in Delver mirrors, and then proposes to remove it to improve the mirror match...
Also, saying that Wasteland is only really good against Boseiju in the Sneak and Show matchup shows either inexperience or a pretty strong bias. Hitting Volcanic Islands and Sol Lands is often huge against a deck trying to resolve 3-4 mana spells and often trying to protect those spells with non-free counterspells such as Spell Pierce or Flusterstorm, particularly when we run 4 copies of Daze.
Welcome Mike!
In any Delver mirror in general, I like to keep in as many Dazes as possible. Winning a Daze war on turn 1 can often dictate the game all on its own. Whoever wins a Daze war on turn 1 will be extremely far ahead and could potentially just run over their opponent.
Against Elves, I can see an argument for Flusterstorm and Invasive Surgery. I am not to high on Flusterstorm, because it is narrow and is a soft counter. I wouldn't rely on it to counter Glimpse of Nature, Green Sun's Zenith or Natural Order. As for Invasive Surgery, it is a hard counter and has potential to remove all copies of
what it counters. Honestly I see merit to both, but Flusterstorm seems a little loose.
Against Food Chain; Pyroblast is excellent. Fatal Push can clear any Baleful Strixes and sometimes gets Misthollow Griffin. You could make an argument to bring in Ancient Grudge to take out random Baleful Strixes and Walking Ballistas. There is also merit to bringing in Pithing Needle to name Ballista in fear of it mowing down your entire borard. I am not high on Flusterstorm, because most of the spells that matter (Food Chain, Griffin, Eternal Scourge, Baleful Strix, Leovold, Manipulate Fate) aren't answered by Flusterstorm. There is merit to playing another Cabal Therapy, in attempt to get Griffins and Scourges in the graveyard. In regards to the positioning of Force of Will in this matchup, it can be good to stop a combo out of nowhere or a giant Ballista so I generally try to keep a couple in.
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The patient Brainstormer always wins.
Hey, I'm not totally sold on the Wasteland-less plan either, especially against a varied meta :). The card is definitely great in a lot of match-ups (Eldrazi, lands, aggro loam, depths combo).
I guess the point I was trying to make about Wasteland in the mirror is that, yes, it does sometimes decide games, but that it often feels like a random coin flip. There's some fraction of mirror matches where one player in a straight 75 mirror will be Wastelanded out of the game. You can try to reduce the chances of that happening by aggressively cantripping for lands in land-light draws, but you don't always have the opportunity to do that -- maybe you need to dig for a removal spell too. Also, you can't cantrip for lands if your only land has been destroyed. Maybe that means you need to mulligan one landers in the Delver mirror? I'd be interested if folks actually do that or not.
My problems with Wasteland in the deck are that it doesn't flip Delver, it doesn't really cast any of your spells, it's terrible when you're behind on board and it's pretty underwhelming when your opponent has an active Deathrite Shaman. It's a win-more card IMHO.
We could try to structure the deck to Wasteland better than our opponent, but I think that means running something like Loam in the board, which is awkward with a single Tropical Island.
Sure, Wasteland has applications against the deck beyond Boseiju -- hopefully I didn't give the impression that it's a completely textless piece of cardboard in the match-up. Boseiju is the best target in their deck though (assuming they're running it).
Wasteland is pretty far from our best interaction against S+S. Discard, more counter magic, more Pyroblasts, even Surgical Extraction all seem better to me. (Although, the utility varies with the number of each effect. The first Wasteland is probably better than the fourth Surgical Extraction for example.) Obviously there are limits to what you can do in a deck and we usually have enough dead cards pre-board that we never have to consider cutting Wasteland for, say, a Pyroblast.
I suspect my 50% win rate against S+S probably has more to do with sloppy play on my part, the strength and consistency of their deck and the fact that I generally lose game one rather than the lack of Wasteland.
5-0ed with this, felt really good:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/647268#online
I know there's been lots of talk about whether Pyro is good or not, and honestly I've been unhappy with him as a late-game topdeck and how he restricts deck building by forcing us to play Probe. And so I came to this list - super lean, basically RUG Delver of old ported into a Deathrite shell. Keeps the aggressive Delver + big beater backed up with Bolts aggressiveness along with full Stifle/Daze/Wasteland package. But still can have DRS just do DRS things and win.
Angler has never been too much of an issue in terms of casting, Thought Scour isn't really required, and Brainstorm usually fixes up any Angler-flooded hands (or you can actually just get enough cards to double Angler; noice). Angler is usually incredibly hard to deal with for most decks anyway, and should take most games singlehandedly if you can get him on the board.
So yeah, do try it, all of those down on Pyromancer.
I agree. The Stifle lists with more Anglers and without Pyromancer feel pretty strong. After you mentioned JPA's list in one of your articles, I tried out his main deck last weekend and got a 5:0 in the first league I played (http://tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=23240&iddeck=180044). The Thought Scour indeed wasn't needed at all and I replaced it with one Spell Snare and one Counterspell (instead of your 2nd Snare) afterwards. Multiple Anglers in the opening hand can be awkward, but in the mid- to lategame, it's perfectly possible to cast back to back Anglers.
The next leagues with the updated list went 4:1. 4 Anglers felt a bit much, especially when you get those 3-Angler-hands and can't find a Brainstorm :D A 3/1 split of Angler/TNN seems reasonable.
I played one Toxic Deluge and really liked it. It's pretty nice to play better sweepers than Electrickery or Fire Covenant without Pyromancer in the deck...
As you said, the list feels like Canadian with a 5/5 Mongoose.
This is the conclusion I came to as well. Basically I'm not a big fan of the Probe/Cabal Therapy plan as I want to be playing a blue deck that is focused on countermagic. If I'm tapping out every turn, I might as well just play a better midrange deck. Delver is not a mid-range playstyle, and gets stomped if you let the game run too long and people start dropping bombs. I felt like every time I resolved Pyromaner, I simply didn't have enough extra spells to get a lot of value out of it. This deck doesn't win on card quality, it wins on consistency, so being able to close the gap with a Bolt or two makes a huge difference. If you want to play discard, I think you should be on a BUG list with Hymn to Tourach.
While I do like Gurmag Angler, I don't see being able to cast more than one per game. I've been trying a 2/2 split of Gurmag Angler and TNN which has been pretty solid. The problem with Grixis Delver is that all of our threats are vulnerable to spot removal. RUG gets to play Nimble Mongoose, which simply blanks a good deal of removal and helps you get there. TNN is like the turbo-charged version of that. 3-mana spells aren't my favorite thing in a tempo deck, but it is easier to cast with DRS.
Speaking of DRS, I've been considering just cutting the lone Tropical Island for another Underground Sea. I find that I am almost never using the life-gain ability, though I suppose it does have some fringe benefits against Reanimator. Beyond that, I feel like it just makes my mana more awkward, and it is that much easier to Waste or Stifle me off the correct mana I need. My sideboard is also pretty heavy on Black and Red cards, so it would make it easier to run things like Marsh Casualties.
Speaking of sideboard all-stars, I've been rocking Sulfuric Vortex as an additional threat against slow and/or control decks. No one boards in enchantment removal against tempo, so it provides a solid clock. It is also one of the reason that I prefer this deck over the BUG variants: Lighting Bolt is just that good. There are a ton of games where I'm able to just eek out a win with the little extra push from some burn.
Regarding the removal suite for the deck, I've been running Dismember and now I think I'll cut the probes to add a Forked Bolt and some additional countermagic. How do people like Fatal Push? I've tried running it in the sideboard, and while it seems like a good generalist card, there are other cards that are more powerful, but less flexible (Deathmark, Dread of Night, Fire Covenant). I used to love Submerge and Sulfur Elemental in classic RUG, but it seems like black gives us better options.
@ChemicalBurns, I did try a similar list a couple months ago and stuck with it until I just wanted to play a better deck for Stifle in Dark Thresh/Canadian Thresh. I ended up changing the Thought Scours to Gitaxian Probes, just to fill the space. Every time I cast Thought Scour on myself, I felt wrong that I wasn't playing Snapcaster Mage. But I knew that Snapcaster would just be too clunky, thus Thought Scour was just bad. I share most of the same thoughts as you on this take on Grixis Delver, that Pyromancer was not something you wanted in a Stifle version of Grixis anyway.
List for Reference;
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The patient Brainstormer always wins.
Okay, I'm back with some more theory crafting.
I really get grinded out by midrange. Pretty bad. And so, here's a scenario. I always jam the shaman on turn 1 if I can, right? I'm starting to wonder if that's not necessarily correct if I probe them, and see StP in hand, or something.
.
Would it be correct to try and ponder instead, if you know about swords, and have no counter magic in hand?
Edit: I suppose I could also just ponder on 2 after getting my DRS hit with swords, to find another threat
So under the assumption your opp plays around daze and you don't want to force a StP: What protection would you be looking for (preboard)?
Depending on your build, it might be an option to cast Ponder and hopefully find either Cabal Therapy, Spell Pierce or Force of Will to push through DRS on the next turn. Otherwise you can dig for and deploy other threats afterwards once you forced the opp to StoP your DRS.
Team SPOD
<Der_imaginäre_Freund> props:
Adan for being the NQG God (drawer)
MorphBerlin, I suppose that daze or force would do, but that's a good point, my opponent doesn't want to walk into daze, so they could be like. "I probably should just ponder, or cast my own DRS.
Adan, you are also echoing the sentiment, forcing my opponent to have the answer, which was my initial strategy.
I'm new to legacy and this deck is very difficult to pilot correctly, I've 4-1'Ed a couple leagues, but scrubbed out of most, so I've been kinda frustrated.
In general, I'm not forcing a STP on a deathrite in a midrange matchup. So if you're pondering for countermagic, then it'd be for specifically daze, which seems loose, especially if there is a chance your opponent will play around it.
Tempo doesn't have a very good mid-range match-up is part of the problem. Decks that have a bigger curve, with bombs at the top end can generally beat Tempo on card quality. You have to race against a mid-range deck and try to get your beats in before they get their card advantage engines up and running. A turn one DRS just isn't much of a threat against mid-range. I'd be digging for a real threat (Delver/Gurmag/TNN) or trying to keep countermagic/Stifle up to stop their early plays. I'd maybe consider a turn one DRS if it allowed me to slam a real threat on turn 2 either with countermagic back-up or something like TNN that is very difficult to remove.
This is another reason why I've moved away from a Probe/Cabal Therapy/Pyromancer list. That is just too durdly against many of the mid-range decks that are going to come out in full force now that Miracles is dead. Cutting that package allows you to up your main deck removal to 6 spells and include things like Spell Pierce and Spell Snare, to help tempo your opponent out. Again though, I played RUG Delver for a long time so that is the playstyle that I'm most comfortable with.
There is also the fact that Tempo, like every Legacy deck, can just run into a few bad MUs every time you play. However, unlike every Legacy deck, at least Tempo has access to Brainstorm, Ponder, Force of Will, and a host of other countermagic. Over time this will allow you to use your skill to edge out your opponents, even in the bad MUs.
On Ponder vs Deathrite Shaman on turn 1. I would lead on Deathrite, because of a few reasons. Firstly, you are playing a Delver deck, you want to be proactive. Secondly, if Deathrite sticks or gets plowed, you still have a Ponder to find a more impactful threat, rather than finding a relatively ineffective Force or Daze for a turn 2 Swords to Plowshares to match your turn 2 Deathrite Shaman. Wasting the Ponder leaves you at a huge loss in tempo if you don't have a threat to follow up.
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The patient Brainstormer always wins.
Lastly, that's the point of DRS. He's a creature good enough that people want to kill it. Further, they want to kill it in part because they want you to have less mana. Giving yourself less mana in hopes of somehow preserving that mana just seems really backwards.
If you want him to stick, you could always lead with Therapy, but as other's said; plays like that are tempo loss and specifically tempo-loss in a tempo-deck. Decks will often (aside from spare mana) lay opposing threats against eachother. Your opposing Delver player may even do this because if you daze, you're tied on mana again; but if he bolts your DRS and you daze, he is behind on mana *and* you have a threat; exactly where they don't want to be.
In fact I'd wager that if your opp is bolting your DRS T1 they either don't have a DRS themselves, cant cast it, or they have daze backup.
Getting out of theorycrafting land; raising the stakes in magic is usually a good plan. You'll get punished for it sometimes by sweepers or losing a counter war that wasn't important, but these are learning experiences about nuance. Aggression is awarded in almost all strategy games because it's more comfortable to play it safe. Until you can gauge your opp and their hand correctly, aggressive wastelanding is good. Until you can realize you lost a mana war and should hold stifle for the equip trigger, annihilation trigger, etc, it's better to just stifle their lands and then realize that maybe you goofed up this one time.
EDIT: on the counter-war bit. A grand example was Infect (Tom ross) vs either Sneakshow or Miracles. He baited a huge counter war over a blood moon while holding a fist of pump spells. Draining his opponent of their countermagic, they indeed got a blood moon, only to lose because they spent their countermagic protecting a spell that didn't matter, rather than fighting over the pump spells that would end the game.
Thanks guys. These were the answers I was looking for. Just have to keep playing I suppose.
How do these new "Grixis Canadian" lists even stand a chance to win against combo decks like Storm and Show&Tell without therapy?
These decks had a very easy time stomping Canadian, as any good storm player can confirm. I'd never run a Grixis delver deck on an MTGO league without having at least 3 Therapies in my 75
"You must believe you are the best, and then make sure you are" Bill Shankly
Storm meets Stifle. Enough said.
As for many other combo decks, pressure in the form of Delver, Pyromancer, Angler, etc. backed up by counters is generally just a tough task for combo decks. The thing is, the longer a combo deck takes to win against Delver, especially with a threat in play, the more the Delver player gets to sculpt their hand to fight an inevitable counter war. Delver decks will usually pressure combo decks to go off before they are ready to go off. With Stifle, Delver can still disrupt the early game for a combo deck by attacking their mana and thus makes it harder to develop a hand capable of going off through disruption.
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The patient Brainstormer always wins.
I don't really agree with that sentiment. I played Fetchland Tendrils and DDFT for years and never had an issue with stifle. Once in a while it'll get you when you get pressured heavy, early, but mostly it's just not an issue. I and many others who have or do play storm well don't consider Stifle significant hate compared to the discard that would be in it's slots.
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