Yeah, i had one in (went down from 2 shortly before the tournament but, going back up to 2!). It was a pretty rough game but went 2-1 so wasn't a total wipe out. Marit Lage and Loam/Punishing Fire are hard enough to deal with but they boarded in Tireless Trackers as well. Not every day you come across that deck though and would have expected to see Turbo Depths over Lands purely from a cost perspective. I also aggressively mulled looking for answers but, maybe shouldn't have(?), unsure. Still, it was a learning experience!
Also in the mirror loss i had, they surgically extracted my Seas, then Wasted a Volc just as i happened to have two copies of March Causalities in hand. Sometimes it just doesn't go your way!
I am playing Ur Delver for a long time now and had a lot of matches against Grixis Delver. It is most of the time 50:50, still I personally won more matches then lost against Grixis. It depends on who is on the play and also how aggressive Ur is able to play while fetching on basics. So Ur can:
1. outrace Grixis with creatures AND burn
2. have practically a deck full of removal spells which deal with your creatures
3. being able to fetch on basic lands which gives you dead Wastelands
If it comes to an topdeck situation Ur will loose in 70-80% of the time. In the early turns it depends on how much removal spells (burn) Ur finds for Shaman, Delver and Pyromancer and how fast Ur races Grixis with PoP + Fireblast finishers. Playing YP instead of Stormchaser in Ur Delver helps a lot in this matchup since it can flood the board and stall out Gurmag Angler.
As Grixis you should aggressively use your counter spells in the early turns and focus on dealing with their creatures first (Bolt instead of Shaman as an answer to their Delver T1 can be quite good!). If you CAN waste them do it fast. You cannot imagine how many times you hold a 1 land hand with Ur which allows you to do anything you want. Being wasted can be absolutely crucial since you can not search for an other land. Otherwise fetch your Wastelands away with Brainstorm and Ponder if possible. Ur plays way more risky I would say and you have to punish that. If you dealt with their stuff in the first 3-4 turns, brainstorming later into an TNN or Gurmag Angler the game becomes much easier for you.
edit: Probes are really not THAT great against Ur. If you play 4 Probes you should board out something like 3 Forces and 1-2 Probes depending on how many cards you have in your sideboard.
I'm after few matches with Lands and UR Delver. As for UR its an even play (as long as you can survive first 2-3 turns and wipe his manabase) as for Lands its a nightmare.
We have been testing decks pre-board and this was a festival of returning wastelands and/or maze of ith play. Most scary is Life from the Loam as even countered its keeping returning with more wastelands.
If we would SB I would put:
+2 Surgical, +2 Price of Progress, +1 Needle
-4 FoW, -1 Probe or Daze
This belongs more into the Ur Thread doesn't it? When comparing Ur to Grixis Delver against Lands I would say playing Ur Delver is MUCH easier, more efficient, faster and the whole matchup should be better. I mean you can race preboard incredibly fast with Swiftspears and Delvers and PoP hits minimum for what... 6... 8 ?? Thats most of the time gg. Postboard with Ur you bring in: Blood Moon, Ensnaring Bridge, Vapor Snag, Surgicals, Needle. This should be enough to win somehow. For Grixis its kind of tough. I mean Diabolic Edict is powerful but Lands can cut Grixis very easy from black and without Shaman it can be quite hard.
I probably put this a wrong way. I played with both Lands and UR Delver with my Grixis Delver deck. Just thinking how to protect our manabase as it seems to be very fragile. Blasting out my two Volcanics disables my removal (lightning and forked bolts), pyromancers and potential SB cards. Still thinking about 3 copies of Stifle but this will shift me more from aggro to control and Im still hear that I should drop this idea.
It's all about playing whatever fits your playstyle. Give stifle a try.
As for the manabase I don't really experience problems. You can still cast DRS off U Sea to make red. Of course, things can go very south in the lands matchup where they get P fire + Grove and wastelock, but you probably aren't winning that one no matter how you build your delver deck.
Check out the 1st page of the primer guys, I updated it with Bob Huang's thoughts about matchups after SCG Wor.
Updated the primer with links to videos and articles.
I played against Bob at scg Worcester (nice guy in person) and I noticed he kept some number of FoW in against me game 3. When I asked him about it he said it was because I was playing stifle.
Admittedly, this was after a game one where he did not get to cast any colored spells save gitaxian probe due to a stifled fetch. As stated in the primer, winning the die roll is very important in the mirror — assuming both pilots are competent.
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Hi everybody, I was planning on taking Grixis Delver to the Legacy Side Events at coming GP Amsterdam. I've played hardly any Legacy for the last two years (work, kids, etc), but before that I've played RUG Delver for several years until Deathrite's popularity made the deck much worse. So, I'm quite familair with the general Tempo Play, which is one of the reasons to choose Grixis Delver (and owning all the cards helps), and I've read the last pages of this thread. Since Grixis Delver has become quite popular, I was wondering if you have any additional advice for the mirror (especially on the draw), what to sideboard in the mirror, and in general whether to play with or without Stifles.
Playing with or without Stifles is the question Im struggling with since the time I started to collect this deck![]()
So in the mirror match I like to sideboard like this:
In: 2 Marsh Casualties, 2 Edict, 2 Pyroblast
Out: 2 Force of Will, 2 Probe, 2 Pierce
I still like having Dazes and a couple FoW to deal with stuff on the stack. You can cut all FoW if you want. From my experience, Daze doesn't really hurt this deck on the draw because most things only cost 1 (compared to something like BUG Delver where the curve is too high to leave all 4 Daze otd).
The casualties are amazing, edict I consider a necessary evil (since it's bad vs pyro tokens), but I like being able to clean up lone anglers or TNNs. Pyroblast is mostly to answer delvers, tnn on stack. If opp has FoW pyro is a blowout. I could see a case for leaving pierce or something instead though.
Last edited by ironclad8690; 03-23-2018 at 01:35 PM.
Hello all!
I have recently started to play Magic again with Legacy being my format of choice. Grixis Delver has been a blast to play thus far. What I am missing is a discussion about the three main variants of Delver that I can identify:
- Stifle (à la LewisCBR)
- Cabal Therapy
and according to recent Top 8ts most successful
- 2 Spell Pierce 15 Creature
Is there an inherent advantage to play 2 Spell Pierces over Stifle and Cabal Therapy or is it that this variant has a more even win percentage against a large field of diverse deck? Every two months there is a medium sized Legacy tournament where I live with lots of Elves, DnT, Maverick and some Sneak and Show, Grixis Delver and Czech Pile. Any tips on which version might perform best in that meta? I have been testing on Xmage a lot and all three variants seem to perform very well...
Thanks!
Felix
In an open field, it probably won't matter as the metagame is pretty diverse, but the differences come up more when you are playing local tournaments. There are metagames where Spell Pierce is crap (Elves, Death & Taxes, Eldrazi) and others where you'd prefer to just 1for1 trade a powerful spell with Spell Pierce (against Czech Pile or Reanimator for instance). It also depends on how well you now the decks in your meta. By the end of the day I prefer Spell Pierce, if only to have more blue cards to pitch to Force of Will. Stifle is a LewisCBR thing, probably ask him about that.
But since we are talking about keeping up the pace, can someone enlighted me on the following things that I have seen lately but don't comprehend:
- Price of Progress in some sideboards - is it really against Lands, Eldrazi and Czech Pile? How would you board?
- the black-heavy sideboards (2 Casualties, 1 Lily, 3 U-Sea 2 Volc main) is that a dedication to creature-heavy match-ups like DnT, Elves and the mirrormatch?
- 4 Bomat Courier (as seen here: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/972126#paper ) Seriously wtf. It's a 1/1 that is brickwalled by Deathrite Shaman in the mirror and basically drops dead against everything. Additionally I'd prioritize every other 1drop before it, so I find it questionable whether it can really generate significant value. And at the same time the list trims down Volcanics to go heavier on black sideboard cards, the deck composition just looks like a mess.
Team SPOD
<Der_imaginäre_Freund> props:
Adan for being the NQG God (drawer)
In a known meta game, Cabal Therapies are amazing as you know what to go for every time. Outside of that, it’s personal preference as I’ve seen players be successful with all three versions (I play all three versions, too)
Price of Progress: is great against Pile and Lands. Personally, I don’t bring it in against Eldrazi and rely more on Wasteland... unless I have nothing else to bring in. They’re just more aggressive than the other two decks and you run the risk of PoP quickly becoming a dead card.
Double black: Lily the Last Hope is excellent against control decks like Pile and Miracles. I’ve ultimated her plenty of times against them. Marsh Casualties are a hedge for True Name while be great against X/1 creature decks and the mirror.
Bomat Courier: Good on Zan Syed for doing well with this. I’ll pass.
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