The something it needs... could be Steppe Lynx?
What would you remove for the Lynx? Lavamancer?
My concerns would be we don't like to play more then 3 lands making our brainstorm very strong. Lynx doesn't have haste or flying is also a 0 power most turns. Adding the 3rd color would require Plateau and making the price or progress hurt us more.
There seems to be 2 versions of this deck:
Counter/Burn (force snapcaster)
Burn Tempo (heavy red, no force/snapcaster)
I have not played enough games against different archtypes to even guess what is the way to go on this. I've been back in the game for about a year and it's been tough finding a test group to try all the different things I want to try here. Goldfishing only goes so far.
I hope your sideboard has something vs Combo... as without FoW, your probably done vs any turn 1 any combo out there if your on the draw. I also think that Spell Snare is simply too strong in today's meta to be left out completely. I understand that your doing for more of a Burn style; but your almost at the point where a pure Sligh deck would simply run better.Originally Posted by millerd33
PS, what is the standard 18 lands, as I have seen at least 4-5 builds that are viable at present depending on if your going burn heavy, contorl heavy, in between or somewhat rogue.
Anyway, just putting it out there as I love this deck and see it doing well in my area (as soon as I get my last 2 Volcanic Islands in hand).
Cheers
My standard 18 lands
3 volcanic island
2 island
2 mountian
4 scalding tarn
4 blue fetch (delta, strand,2 misty)
3 red fetch (foothills, mire, mesa)
SB:
4 pyrostatic pillar
3 smash to smithereens
3 submerge
3 surgical extraction
2 spell pierce
Tried spell pierce main. Never leaving home without them again. I tried figure of destiny over lavamancer and it def. felt subpar. Mancer has been an mvp against the popular decktypes and wacky homebrew decks that would have most definitely beaten me unless I had my little buddy busting shots at their hatebears. Other random thought; I tried running 2x barb rings and my verdict is leave them out. It's actually kind of hard to get threshold against certain decks esp. if you run 3/4 snapcasters. Don't know if anyone else thought about this but there's my 2c on it.
Also I wouldn't ever run less than 3 snapcasters, 4 ideally.
"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."
Went to a local shop and got a 3-1 record
UR Delver
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Goblin Guide
3 Snapcaster Mage
3 Grim Lavamancer
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
3 Price of Progess
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
3 Force of Will
3 Spell Pierce
2 Spell Snare
2 Daze
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Arid Mesa
4 Volcanic Island
2 Mountain
2 Island
SB:
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Submerge
3 Smash to Smithereens
2 Dispel
1 Force of Will
UR Delver vs Burn 2-0
Game 1: he was stuck with 1 land for so many turns as i pound away with 2 flipped delvers.
Game2: removed PoP put in 1 FoW and 2 Dispel. 2 lands tapped out as i chain lightning his Marauder and played grim, On his third turn he just triple chain lightning me for 9 damage *face slap* thankfully he didn't kill my grim ..... I was nervous sitting at 3 when he threw fireblast at me at once saccing two mountains without floating the mana, responded with a strong spell pierce. That was a life saver as he drew lands on his 3 consecutive draws. with a flipped delver finish the job.
UR Delver vs UB Affinity 2-0
Game 1: Went to win with a small margin thanks to continuous brainstorm and ponder searching frantically for Bolts and attacking with 2 Flipped Delvers and a price of proress for 8 as he race me with Etched Champion carrying cranial plating.
Game 2: Board in REB for his MoE and StS removing spell pierce and FoW. grim lavamancer and bolts took care of memnite, ornithoper, frogmite and signal pest while 1 REB killed MoE while declaring attackers. Shoot down his Cranial Plating attached to Etched and race him with 2 PoP dealing 12dmg and 1 flipped delver attacking every turn.
UR Delver vs DnT 2-1
Game 1: I'm on the draw and he opened with vial and no FoW in hand. He went on to win riding serra avenger jitte+SoFI. GG.
Game 2: Board in StS and remove Spell Pierce I think. bolt his mom and Mangara on sight, killed his fliers and ride with 3 flipped Delvers as I counter away his StP.
Game 3: I was confident I took him down to 8 life riding mainly on 2 early game guides and snapcaster, when he turned the table with 2 Jotun "freakin" Grunt feeding on my mountainous graveyard while grim is a dead card with a single phyrexian revoker naming it. Jotuns stayed for a while with a flickerwisp/vial mechanic that kept that jotun's counter on restart mode. I was on Defense mode till I hit 1 life loosing all my men (most of my bolts were used killing moms, serras and arbiters as I attack with guides). EoT brainstorm and found my luckiest brainstorm ever (Guide, Bolt and StS), replaced my 2 fetch lands in hand shoot StS on Phyrexian Revoker that didn't attack then Bolt him. draw Guide and attack while his Jotun "bothersome" Grunt and Flickerwisp tapped and no hand.
UR Delver vs Enchantress 0-2
game 1: Mull to 5 with no lands in sight.I countered his city of solitude but he followed with Solitary Confinement. On that moment on it was a solitaire game.
Game 2: Board in Surgical Extraction, FoW and taking out 4 Chain Lightning. Mulled to 6 looking for a good hand. Another "Faceslap" when he drop 3 leyline of sanctity as i start. Took him to 7 life with 2 goblin guide and 1 flipped delver before he dropped solitary confinement again and in the end I just waited for Words of War shooting away.
Pros:
Delver is the MVP while Bolts hold off pesky critters.
Cons:
Facing enchantress
Last edited by Abantau; 03-02-2012 at 06:37 PM. Reason: Forgot PoP on the list
I'm assuming the three missing cards in your decklist are PoP. Did you ever feel light on land with 18?
@keys: oh yeah they're PoP's, edited it. My mull rate would be 2 out of 10 games in playtests not because of land issues but more on looking for good answers. I mull the 2nd game on enchantress because opening hand was arid mesa, mountain 3 bolt, 1 FoW, 1 price and i know enchantress would board in 4 leyline. >_< Haven't tested 20 lands though went straight to 18 lands when I started playing delver.
Came in third at my local tournament again--I actually should have won but two grievously poor decisions on keeping hands essentially made the last set a blow-out.
I'll write a report and the decklist later today, heading to the 'rents house for the weekend.
Overall--U/R Delver is godlike and fast as hell.
Trend's I'm noticing: Goblin Guide feels shitty unless there's 2 of them, Delver does not. Mishra's Factories often shut down my aggression hard, as they save removal for delvers and can very easily block goblin guide's.
Sorry for double post:
I came in third (again T_T) at my local FNM. Here's the list I ran:
//Creatures:
4x Goblin Guide
4x Delver of Secrets
3x Grim Lavamancer
3x Snapcaster Mage
//Spells:
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Chain Lightning
3x Rift Bolt
3x Fireblast
4x Brainstorm
4x Force of Will
3x Ponder
3x Daze
//Lands:
3x Volcanic Island
2x Mountain
2x Island
11x Fetches
//Sideboard:
3x Pyroblast
3x Tormod's Crypt
3x Smash to Smithereens
3x Price of Progress
3x Submerge
Round 1: Nic Fit by Darrel-
Game one: I get a delver down, it flips next turn, he fetches into a Bayou and I remember that he plays Nic Fit, so I go balls deep. I believe I had him at turn 4. He deeds for one on turn 3 taking out lavamancer and delver, played his Liliana on turn 4, but I had the burn to win on my untap. Bolt Chain Fireblast.
-3 Fireblast, +3 PoP (despite the number of basics, he didn't play around PoP in game one and I don't run PoP maindeck so he never really saw it).
Game two: I have an aggressive start, double guide's go pretty far but a maelstrom pulse stops them. He goes off into a grave titan while I only have lavamancer down, I ping for two and at this point am surely dead, he's at 10, I'm at 10, except on his side it's a grave titan and 4 zombies. On his turn he deeds for 1 taking out my lavamancer (I have 4 cards in hand), big misplay here as I was surely dead. I shock him in response and I believe I brainstormed into a PoP for 8.
2-0
1-0-0
Round 2: GW Maverick by Casey-
Game one: I keep an ok hand. He swords my delvers and guides aren't terribly effective against 4/4 knights. The situation gets awkward, I get him to 2 life but can't top deck a burn--I brainstorm into a daze and 2 fetches and want to kill myself. He alpha-strikes me with thrun and a 13/13 kotr for exactly lethal.
-3 Rift Bolt, -3 fireblast, -2 Goblin Guide
+3 Submerge, +3 Price of Progress, +2 Smash to Smithereens
Game two: I drop a delver on turn 1, it flips turn 2. This was fairly straight forward, I burn hard and get there quickly.
Game three: I drop a delver on turn 1 and again it flips on turn 2. He gets beaten down for awhile until he drops a scryb ranger, I know it has protection from blue but very stupidly try to submerge it in response to a fetch. This sets me back, but later I have a PoP for 8 on the board and he's forced to waste his own savannah and take out half of his land. He fetches for a forest, I submerge a pridemage. We eventually land in a situation in which he has 3 life and I have a bolt and a delver ready. But his second scryb ranger prevents the attack. Scavenging ooze is there and I very stupidly don't check graveyards, it didn't ever occur to me that delver was actually the only creature I had played and he had already exhausted his own graveyard, so I very stupidly burn the ranger and swing to put him to 1. He plays two more creatures and passes. I topdeck a brainstorm into a chain lightning and a fireblast and seal the game.
2-1
2-0
Round 3: UW control by Rich-
Game one: I keep a one lander, ~30 cards later I still haven't found a land, he's at 1 and he finally sticks a stoneforge and grabs jitte. Then he sticks another one and grabs batterskull and stabilizes.
Game two: I keep a 4-lander after I'm sufficiently mind-fucked from somehow not seeing 2 lands in 30 cards, I have fetches, so my plan was to simply ditch the extraneous land for business and fetch it away. I brainstorm into 2 fetches and a daze (this is an odd trend I run into far, far too often). I fetch away things. I find a ponder, interestingly enough, it hits land. About 12 turns later, neither of us have done anything because we're land flooded, except he has actual bombs he can drop and I don't. I have every land in my deck on the table from trying to brainstorm/ponder into business and fetch away chaff, I eventually lose while he's at 10 life. I ponder, he fetches for a plateau and REB's it, I drop snapcaster, he snares it. He sided in a plateau and REB's, and my mind was sufficiently fucked.
0-2
2-1-0
That was very frustrating, but on the plus side, Force of Will kind of rocks. I finally got a playset and have been ecstatic about it. It won me several games throughout the day and I wouldn't run spell pierce over it. I generally just pitch dazes / ponders / snapcasters to it.. Specifically against GW Maverick, it ended up countering jitte's and SFM's while letting me tap out and be aggressive.
I played about 30 games between the tournament and then with friends at home, and forces were just such an improvement to the performance of it. It got a solid run against a variety of tier 1 decks and performed admirably against all of them. In fact, I likely would have gone 3-0 and won out had I not been land fucked on both sides of the spectrum on round 3. I tell myself everytime I don't do it, so I really need to stop--you don't keep one landers. The 4 lander was just me being -really- dumb and mindfucked. And even after that, I burned through 3 or 4 fetches and all I was drawing were lands and counters, it was mind boggling.
Submerge seems iffy in the board, REB's even don't seem that amazing.. Smash to Smithereens is boarded in against almost every deck on principle. Crypt and PoP are again pretty straight forward. I may move PoP back to the main, but fireblast just secures so many games--the only problem is occasionally drawing it in multiples. At which point, multiple PoP's are fine. I feel like I want to get submerge and REB out for other things, perhaps sulfuric vortex and something else..
Hey guys,
I was a little disappointed lately with Lavamancers performance and did some testings to cut him. Instead I played 2 Sulfuric Vortex MD. They also do 2 points of damage each turn, without summoning sickness and are way harder to deal with, 'cause decks rarly have answers to entchantments by hand. Furthermore it shuts down the punishing fire combo, played in Maverick or Aggro Loam as well as Jitte and Batterscull.
Its main drawback is the cc3, since I usually don't care much about my life. Other than that I like to topdeck one in mid- and lategame, while a Lavamancer usually doesn't stick long enough to push some damage through.
I'm very satisfied with my list and these changings leave me with 2 additional sideboard slots, which can be used for chain of vapor or echoing truth to deal with more and more common white leylines.
Gobbos: Kings of flavortext!
This doesn't sound terrible, especially looking at some recent tournament results. Stoneblade decks (Batterforge Jitte) are so dominant everywhere at the moment that Vortex would actually hose them pretty bad. Most of my games has people stabilizing at 5-6 life and I can't outpace their life gain via Jitte's or BSkulls.
honestly any kind of lifegain wrecks this deck hth.
"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."
Played the regular U/R Delver list with Daze and Price of Progress in the main without Fireblast in my 75. It was my first time playing this deck and I had a great time despite going 3-3.
Round 1: Past in Flames (2-0). Game 1 he mulled to 5 and didn't end up doing much of anything and Game 2 Sulfuric Vortex was sweet. He was at very low life and stormed to 1 life, playing a Empty the Warrens for 6 while I had a Goblin Guide in play. 2/2 > 1/1.
Round 2: Reanimator (1-2). Game 1 I burned him out after he reanimated an Elesh Norn on 10 or 11 live. It was sweet. Game 2 and 3 he plopped a Sphinx of the Steel Wind on the battlefield and it was terrible.
Round 3: RUG Delver (2-0). Grim Lavamancer and Price of Progress FTW.
Round 4: U/B Faeries (2-1). Delver of Secrets is bigger than Spellstutter Sprite. Umezawa's Jitte saw play games 2 and 3 but fortunately I was ready for it with Smash to Smithereens. Huzzah!
And now things take a turn for the worse...
Round 5: Spiral Tide (0-2). How do we beat this deck? It won on turn 4 both games and I never drew a Force of Will off his several Time Spirals. Poop. I don't even remember him countering any of my dudes and game 1 he went off on 1 life. I even Surgical Extractioned his High Tide game two
Round 6: U/W Stoneblade (0-2). I mulled to 5 game 1 and game 2 I think I was killed by a Batterskull. Not the easiest matchup either but at least it was interactive, unlike Spiral Tide.
General conclusions:
The deck is really fun, I'll definitely try it again but I might put in some Fireblast somewhere in the 75 for some extra reach. Also, lifegain is a huge problem so I'm considering Sulfuric Vortex as well.
For reference, here's my sideboard:
3 Pyrostatic Pillar
1 Price of Progress
2 Pyroblast
2 Smash to Smithereens
3 Submerge
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Tormod's Crypt
Congrats on the event, 3-3 is respectable, and I am sure you had fun; thank you for sharing.
High Tide decks don't generally counter dudes, they counter enough to stay alive until they can go off; thus they retain control to protect their combo. Your maindeck Control is one way to beat the deck, speed is another, and SB options such as Flusterstorm do work vs this type of deck; but you will need to be tight on your control and hit them early in the combo. Hand and Land destruction are another good way to ruin them. I play the Solidarity version of the deck, and your right that it is not very interactive; but, it is fun for the guy using the deck, matches are over quick (one way or the other), and some of them can actually go off on turn 3 (consistently).
Cheers
Sweet report, I like the pyrostatic pillar idea (I'm assuming that's what you meant against PiF), but moreso towards high tide decks. That would be your answer to it. I'm likely going to try it myself.Played the regular U/R Delver list with Daze and Price of Progress in the main without Fireblast in my 75. It was my first time playing this deck and I had a great time despite going 3-3.
Round 1: Past in Flames (2-0). Game 1 he mulled to 5 and didn't end up doing much of anything and Game 2 Sulfuric Vortex was sweet. He was at very low life and stormed to 1 life, playing a Empty the Warrens for 6 while I had a Goblin Guide in play. 2/2 > 1/1.
Round 2: Reanimator (1-2). Game 1 I burned him out after he reanimated an Elesh Norn on 10 or 11 live. It was sweet. Game 2 and 3 he plopped a Sphinx of the Steel Wind on the battlefield and it was terrible.
Round 3: RUG Delver (2-0). Grim Lavamancer and Price of Progress FTW.
Round 4: U/B Faeries (2-1). Delver of Secrets is bigger than Spellstutter Sprite. Umezawa's Jitte saw play games 2 and 3 but fortunately I was ready for it with Smash to Smithereens. Huzzah!
And now things take a turn for the worse...
Round 5: Spiral Tide (0-2). How do we beat this deck? It won on turn 4 both games and I never drew a Force of Will off his several Time Spirals. Poop. I don't even remember him countering any of my dudes and game 1 he went off on 1 life. I even Surgical Extractioned his High Tide game two
Round 6: U/W Stoneblade (0-2). I mulled to 5 game 1 and game 2 I think I was killed by a Batterskull. Not the easiest matchup either but at least it was interactive, unlike Spiral Tide.
General conclusions:
The deck is really fun, I'll definitely try it again but I might put in some Fireblast somewhere in the 75 for some extra reach. Also, lifegain is a huge problem so I'm considering Sulfuric Vortex as well.
For reference, here's my sideboard:
3 Pyrostatic Pillar
1 Price of Progress
2 Pyroblast
2 Smash to Smithereens
3 Submerge
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Tormod's Crypt
Ad Nauseam based storm decks should have a tough time going off against us. Stay smart and aim for big damage asap. Know when to play a spell pierce or a daze to disrupt the combo. Landing a series of bolts will reduce their ADN tremendously. Pillar would be most harmful against this deck as well, likely ending the game. This looks like our go-to answer for storm decks imo.
Spiral Tide based decks, this doesn't sound hard on paper. I would actually, probably aim to counter their cantrips as quite frankly most of the deck is cantrips. Either that or aim to counter untap effects like Turnabout if they get greedy and use up all of their mana prior to untapping. Pillar in games two and three are going to be pretty key here as they require ~16-18 storm in order to deck you and can't go off until turns 3-5, giving you an opportunity to land it before they go off, and even then they need to dig. You don't care about your own life total so that's fine.
Against tide decks, I would board in REB's and Pillar's dropping Price and Mancer's to fit them in. A resolved pillar is nearly game ending to them, they'd have to dig hard for an answer that we can counter, and all of that dig will disrupt their main plan.
Glad you liked my really brief report, I was procrastinating from homework. Yeah that's a good suggestion, I'll keep that in mind next time I play. I'm also thinking of putting a FoW in the sideboard since I only run 3 maindeck. I suppose that means it'd be to my benefit to mulligan into a Pillar if at all possible.
@SupREME-10:
Flusterstorm's a good suggestion as well, that would certainly circumnavigate the Pact of Negations they usually side in against blue. I was honestly surprised how incredibly difficult that matchup was and I thought I'd at least be able to go 2-1.
ReBs and hitting the cantrips does help; but hand disruption and land disruption hurts High Tide decks the most.
As I mentioned, I run the Solidarity version (as I don't have 4x Candelabra of Tawnos) and the all instant(s) aspect can actually be even more scary than the Spiral Tide version in certain match-ups.
It can go off on your opponents Turn 3 upkeep if you High Tide into High Tide, into Reset, into Turnabout, into Brain Freeze (@4), Remand, Brain Freeze (@5), Remand, Brain Freeze (6) for a total of 51 cards milled... yes it is a bit of a God Hand; but it happens as you have a lot of Dig cards to assemble things in those 1st 3 turns (and if you do the match that left 2 cards for Control too), etc.
It is more normal to go off as late as possible (more time to assemble lands and get sweet hand); but the deck is no longer considered top tier, so it can get in there to steel wins in a heartbeat.
If he is playing the Candelabra Version, then hit their Candels with your artifact removal and go for Surgical Extraction on them and the High Tides and/or the turnabouts.
Cheers
So, I want to go through and, after quite awhile playing with the deck, bring up some observations and primarily--glaring issues I have with the deck.
I'll start with the most obvious ones:
1) Stoneforge Mystic rapes this deck. A resolved Jitte and Batterskull literally just end the deck's effectiveness. I actually don't recall the last game I won against a resolved Batterskull because the deck is 100% designed around your opponent having 20 life.
2) People damn near inherently play around Price of Progress. Maverick and Stoneblade can both maneuver around this card very easily and they're absurdly popular decks. The most I've hit anyone in recent memory with Price of Progress is 4. Why don't we just run Flame Rift or whatever it's called, at least that's just guaranteed damage.
Less obvious things:
3) I find myself mulliganing a lot with this deck. Too many hands are either like, straight burn with no counters and dig, or all counters and a creature with no dig, etc. I find optimal hands to be somewhat blended, for instance--in my last game of the night I snap-kept this hand: Delver, Guide, Force, Daze, Brainstorm, Fetch, Fetch. To me you literally cannot get a better opening hand. However it's rare to get two creatures in your opening hand, and 1-2 counters, and 1-2 burn, and 1-2 dig, etc. One landers and no-landers happen often enough at low land counts, having a hand of something silly that's too one-sided to play doesn't help. The deck actually needs the creatures to deal damage or else you basically can't win--we don't run a realistic amount of burn to outright kill someone -especially- if they play around PoP (which they will because it's often very easy to).
4) The deck has no real mid-late game threats. When I brainstorm when I'm out of gas and hit like guide guide bolt, this doesn't actually help me against their large knights etc. I want to see burn. Except if they've countered / killed all of my creatures, the burn isn't helpful anymore because I can't reach 16-20 life with burn, hell it's hard anything past 10. Delver's are good but fragile and die easily, guide's can be awesome until someone drops a factory or any naturally large creature like a knight, then he is just a chump blocker until I find burns.
5) In conjunction with point 4: the deck doesn't actually kill good decks in an optimal amount of time, almost ever. When you're running into Swords, then Snapcaster Swords, then Brainstorm swords, then spell snare on price, then stoneforge into jitte into "I can't die because you just don't hit that hard bro" mode, it's actually surprisingly easy to disrupt this deck's gameplan. If you deal with the early creatures, it doesn't pack enough burn to kill people and has a lot of trouble recovering the board state because as the game goes on, other people's boards get stronger while ours stays non-existent to the same weak 2/2's with haste. The 7/7 knights don't give a shit about your 2/2 body, sorry guide. On top of that, if you can't immediately kill that stoneforge and jitte hits, it's almost an unwinnable position. I've overcome a jitte once, because my opponent couldn't find a swords or a snapcaster mage and he was digging hard--I burnt 4 creatures while beating him with a delver to death.
Right now this deck just loses too much to all of the top tier decks, their strategies often times beat ours simply on a functional level. It's not like they're designed to hose it, they just happen to do so. Take for instance the new Lingering Souls stoneblade build, Lingering Souls wrecks us, we can't remove 4 creatures and we certainly can't swing enough creatures through without them dying to double blocks. Stoneforge based plans are incredibly tough to get through.
Hands of like Daze daze force brainstorm bolt land land aren't actually keepable, and yet they're remarkably common, as your hand size reduces the flexibility of it reduces and it becomes harder to keep your initial creatures alive when you sort of end up having to keep hands like Land land Delver Bolt Bolt. That hand is terrible, delver is -going- to die and you have a whopping 6 damage before you're top-decking. Even if it was land land delver daze bolt, it's not actually going to get there unless your opponent gets unlucky. The deck suffers from too many cards that don't operate well together because they're so independent of each other, they don't buy time for some big bomb and the burns are really intended for your opponent's face, buying yourself time to find a delver just buys them enough time to find removal for your delver, I'm either applying all of the pressure in the world or virtually no pressure because one or two cards completely shut the deck down.
Sulfuric Vortex is awesome sideboard material.
Luck is a residue of design.
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