Are you running 3 or 4 Dismember? Should we start splashing black duels/swamp? Dark Confidant?Originally Posted by John Cox
Edit: i may have been out of line to dismiss dismember so quickly. Replacing chains did not even cross my mind.
I' am currently running 2 Dismember and my list looks like that:
Lands [18]
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Flooded Strand
3 Bloodstained Mire
4 Volcanic Island
3 Mountain
1 Island
Creatures [14]
4 Goblin Guide
4 Delver of Secrets
3 Grim Lavamancer
3 Snapcaster Mage
Spells [28]
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
2 Fire / Ice
2 Dismember
3 Price of Progress
3 Force of Will
3 Spell Snare
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
In my opinion leaving FOWs vs Maverick is nonsense. You want to counter every single card in that matchup so its better to kill creatures on board as Canadian do.
I am running very close to what you have; but I have 2x Fireblast where you have the 2x Dismember; I am not sure which is better; but vs Aggro dismember certainly warrants merit.
Thanks for shaing.
I had 2 fireblasts instead of 2 dismembers before. Then I realized that I have to deal with KotR somehow.
grim lavamancer makes it pretty easy to burn down goyf and kotr. one good thing about dismember though is it's at least flashable with snapcaster like when you absolutely positively must take 4 dmg to destroy a terravore or some other double-digit power toughness creature.
"It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing. There is no sorrowing. For sorrow is a thing swallowed up in death. And death and dying are the very life of the darkness."
I have three Dismember, I trying Fire // Ice right now in the fourth slot. My rational is that it taps big things and is kills little thing so it works kind of like a dismember but is less damaging.
It feels wrong wasting a bolt to kill a hierarch.
the list i'm thinking of so far is
4 delver
4 goblin guide
3 lavamancer
3 snapcaster
4 brainstorm
2 daze
2 fire/ice
3 FoW
2 fireblast
3 bolt
3 pop
3 spell snare
3 chain lightning
3 ponder
2 arid mesa
2 island
3 misty rainforest
2 mountain
4 scalding tarn
4 volcanic island
1 wooded foothills
I want to work in maze of ith into this somewhere but there are a few arguments against it, namely I can't decide what to cut in its favor, and this deck could really suffer if you draw an opener with maze as the only land. sure, you can mull but this deck is really consistent and mulling is something I don't want to do on a regular basis. barring dumb luck(5 lands in my opener wtf)I don't have to mull too often because of the low curve.
"It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing. There is no sorrowing. For sorrow is a thing swallowed up in death. And death and dying are the very life of the darkness."
Interesting list, I would run 4 bolts before the 3rd Chain Lightning.
Last edited by John Cox; 01-20-2012 at 11:03 PM.
I want very badly to run 4 of each but I compromised at 3 so I could make room for fire/ice.
"It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing. There is no sorrowing. For sorrow is a thing swallowed up in death. And death and dying are the very life of the darkness."
Took second at my local FNM tonight with U/R Delver:
//Creatures: 14
4x Delver of Secrets
4x Goblin Guide
3x Grim Lavamancer
3x Snapcaster Mage
//Instants: 18
3x Price of Progress
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Daze
3x Spell Pierce
4x Brainstorm
//Sorceries: 10
3x Ponder
3x Lava Spike
4x Rift Bolt
//Lands: 18
3x Scalding Tarn
4x Misty Rainforest
4x Flooded Strand
2x Volcanic Island
3x Island
2x Mountain
//Sideboard:
3x Smash to Smithereens
3x Tormod's Crypt
3x Submerge
2x Fireblast
1x Grim Lavamancer
3x Pyroblast
Lands aren't perfect, but it was only relevant once in the games I played where I was low on red mana, I need arid mesa's or something stat.
Round 1: Pox
So this was Pox, with Bitterblossom and Jitte. Long story short, Jitte hit the board games one and three--conveniently the games that I lost because I happened to be tapped out and did NOT see Jitte coming from Pox. As a general statement, I have bad experiences with this deck vs Pox. We already run very few lands, and on your turn 3 when you wasteland my volc and then smallpox my island taking my creature with it.. it was just ridiculous.
Loss, 1-2 (0-1)
Round 2: U/W Blade Control
Game one I blew him out with delvers and had the daze for SFM on turn two. Game two I walked two goblin guides into Mishra's Factories intentionally, aiming to burn them after activation. He had counters every time so I lost my guides and he took over. Game three, he somehow got land-flooded while I had three unflipped delvers and a mancer on the table. Then the delver's flipped and swung him out for 11.
I was happy, as he was one of the best players that shows up regularly.
Win, 2-1 (1-1)
Round 3: U/W Tempo
Game one I blew him out with delver + daze on SFM. He scooped immediately with no answers in sight. Game two I had as ideal of a turn 1-2 as I can think of, t1 delver go, t2 delver flip, guide, one mana open for spell pierce with daze in hand swing for 5. I swung him for five and killed / countered everything that he could put Jitte on (it hit the board) until it was closed out.
I was ecstatic, since I'd say he's the best player there. Pretty sure he won GP Providence with NO FOW Bant last year. Luck was definitely on my side here and it was fun playing against someone who is very clearly better than I am at playing the game. For me this was the best game of the night. I don't think I made any drastic misplays and I was pretty focused the whole time, I mulliganed the right hands into what I wanted for the match up, everything went as planned.
Win, 2-0 (2-1)
Round 4: G/W Maverick
Forunately, this was another one of the best players there. Game one I just do what U/R Delver does--kill everything I see, burn him when it's appropriate, and punch through. He eventually got into a decent position after I had just killed I think his second Mom, but he was at 3 life and I had a Spike in hand. I was afraid he had a STP in his hand at the ready, as I knew that if I didn't kill him this turn, Jitte was going to get put on a dude and the game would be over. Luckily, he didn't, I spiked and he scooped.
Game two wasn't much of a game, he had an amazing opening hand but no green sources, and then he just never found one until he was at 7 life. He fetched down to 6, at the end of his turn I PoP'd him for 4 and Lavamancer'd him for the remainder and he scooped.
Win, 2-0 (3-1).
G/W Mav would go on to win first due to my horrible loss VS Pox, I came in second. But I was totally first in my head, I started the night off with a frustrating loss only to come back and beat three people back to back to back in convincing fashion. For my local meta, that was as hard of a comeback as you could get and it felt awesome. I made a single misplay against Pox that I'm convinced lost me the series (I burnt my Smash to Smithereens early, when I didn't need to, and Jitte hit the board the next turn, had that not happened I had enough board presence to race her), had it not been for that, I could have gone 4-0.
I wasn't sure if I wanted to invest anymore money into the deck as I was getting a little bored of it, but after that, I'm for sure fixing it up to being much much better. A very good friend of mine is willing to lend me his FOW's as he no longer runs his blue deck in tournament anymore which is going to be wonderful.
good job, dude. I gotta eat my words here and take back what I said about this deck underperforming without FoW.
"It is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing. There is no sorrowing. For sorrow is a thing swallowed up in death. And death and dying are the very life of the darkness."
There seems to be some consensus on running Snapcaster. Is there anybody else not playing that guy?
I went 3:3 with the following list today, but I didn't particularly feel that the losses were due to lack of Snapcasters (lost against Affinity, Zoo, and my own bad plays in general :D)...
Lands:
2 Mountain
1 Island
3 Volcanic Island
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Arid Mesa
4 Misty Rainforest
Creatures:
4 Goblin Guide
4 Delver of Secrets
3 Grim Lavamancer
Burn:
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
3 Rift Bolt
3 Price of Progress
Digging:
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
Counters:
3 Daze
4 Spell Snare
3 Force of Will
Sideboard:
SB: 3 Smash to Smithereens
SB: 4 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 3 Spell Pierce
SB: 1 Grim Lavamancer
SB: 4 Submerge
@Kich: Your list looks pretty solid. My main complaint is the lack of Chain Lightning. It's almost strictly superior Lava Spike. I'm pretty sure you should run it as a 4-of before Lava Spike ever touches your decklist. I understand it has a drawback, but in my experience it can almost always be played around. Maybe in an extremely red heavy meta you could argue in favor of Lava Spike, but looking at your matchups I'm guessing that's not the case for you. Regardless, grats on your finish!
I still don't. But I also play an extremely aggressive build that aims to win very early and never wants to see the late game. In my testing, I almost always wished Snapcaster Mage was a Bolt when I drew him, so that's what I replaced them with. In a more controlling build, running FoW MD, I think it's likely correct to run Snapcaster.
Chain lightning is definitely going to be added in place of spikes and a rift bolt, going to 4x bolt / 4x chain / 3x rift / 3x price. At the moment just waiting for the money to do it.
I'm questioning Spell Snare and whether I would rather have it over Spell Pierce. Pierce was an all-star today, countering removal and important shit all day. It fell off late game which was a problem, but early game it dominated.
And once again, price underperformed really hard. That was my biggest complaint actually. I sided it out in literally every matchup except G/W Maverick. Upon turn 1, people play around it hard. Granted, I didn't run into any 3 color decks here, but both U/W decks never had more than 1 non-basic. At one point one of the U/W decks had 4 islands and 2 plains out and a mishra's factory.
Also, I don't know why exactly I had this reaction, maybe because I know my deck has plenty of cheap threats, but when my opponent FoW's my turn 3 delver, I got really excited and knew I won. Every time I saw someone burn force on me, it felt really good and I knew I was in a great position, especially when they pitch brainstorms or snapcasters.
I can see that argument even though I've been quite happy with the FoWs since I added them. Maybe It would have been correct for me to play Snapcasters then...
Mind sharing your latest list, zilla?
I have a urb list I've been working on with bob, tombstalker, and ghastly demise(used to be thoughtseize). I also include 2 sdt to help dig, flip delver and prevent bob damage. So far it has tested nice but im still trying to find the optimal build.
Good catch on SDT I've been trying it (and now jace) with good results.
Hasn't changed much from my post on page 3. I've been testing another fetch or basic in place of the fourth Volcanic, and sometimes I drop the fourth Price of Progress for a third Spell Snare, and the sideboard is in constant flux, but aside from that it doesn't change much.
I play my build extremely aggressively, rarely using my burn on creatures and just going straight to the dome. The countermagic in my build is there just to buy an extra turn or two to seal the deal.
When I'm in the mood to play a similar deck with more control capability, I reach for RUG Tempo, because I personally think it's better suited to that role than this deck is. Your mileage may vary.
Honestly, I feel like this deck is somewhat of an evolution to RUG. I think what it comes down to is that at the end of the day, Tarmogoyf is a 2 mana big dumb creature, and that's it. And I think the moment Delver hit the Magic world, the need for Green in that deck for a hard hitting cheap beater was completely removed. Delver is your big dumb beater for cheap now. I think it came out as a movement where people were looking at RUG and realizing that they could have a more stable mana base and better removal package while packing the same punch just by dropping green--or at least that's how I ended up building my list.
I mean, even the little things like Goblin Guide telling you what they're going to draw. In the off-chance it's a land, that sucks, but I've actually swung games by seeing that card. I can't recall if I wrote it down in my write-up, but the third game against U/W control, I swung, he revealed Stoneforge Mystic with a clear board, the only land he had untapped was a fetch, I dazed it, he fetched. Never saw another creature and lost 2 turns later after I brainstormed into a full grip of 2x Delver 1x Lavamancer.
I dig what you're saying, but Delver isn't really a replacement for Goyf, it's an addition to it. Both decks run Delver. U/R Delver runs Guide as its secondary beater because it's great in the early game. Guide pretty much sucks in the mid to late game though, where Tarmogoyf shines. That's really the foundation of my point: if you're going to go the more controlling route, you're going to want a stronger late game, and Goyf provides that.
Not saying this deck can't have a solid mid to late game, I just think RUG does it better. That said, RUG is much more reliant on creatures to win, which means it's a lot weaker to strategies that prey on creatures. UR Delver's strength is having the combo-like finish of burn, which in my experience is best suited to a more aggressive early game strategy.
Again though, this is all from my personal experience. I recognize that I play the deck in a very specific way, and that there are wildly different approaches to it, so if you're making it work as a more aggro-control style deck, more power to you.
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