[Deck] bUrg Tempo

[Sasan]

No one denies that playing Probes has benefits. The information advantage is nice. I am with you there. But we cut some of our best cards. I know that American RUG Delver lists play Probes now. It is the new trend. But the trend will be over soon when people realize that they need 60 cards decks and not 58 card decks with more value.

Spell Pierce is really bad in the current meta consisting of cc2 spells and creatures. I cannot justify running it in the main deck. Everything Pierce is good at can be done with Decays (Planeswalkers, Equipment etc.).

Mongoose is bad at multiples? No Sir. It is slow to reach Thresh and Thought Scour is needed? No, RUG Delver never played with Scours or Probes in the past and no one complained about multiple Mongeese or a slow clock. It is play style dependent but you have your fast clock with Delver/Shaman. Mongoose is a mid game card versus midrange and control decks :-)

Darkblast is ok but too slow to remove multiple creatures. And -1/-1 does not remove a Shaman or a Stoneforge. It is not the best way to cut your best sideboard spell for a semi good card.

Just my two cents ;-)

[Rico Suave]

Playing with Ooze instead of double Goyfs is a bit lackluster. This is not the current state of the development of the archetype. Only the 13 creature base with Goyfs is flexible enough for many matchups. Without Goyfs you do not have a late game bomb. Ooze is slow and is only a one off.

The interesting question is if the inclusion of Probes makes up for all these disadvantages. Remember that you play with only 58 real cards with two Probes.I can answer that: No. Two Probes make the chance of drawing an extra removal, extra creature, extra land only slightly better (your chances of drawing one is 1/58 with two Probes Nd 1/60 without them). The extra information provided by the Probes is not worth it as a good player can foresee many situations. So Probe is ok but not needed. We have better options. I can think that Jacob Wilson, a RUG Delver player, will disagree here ;-)

As a friend of Steve and having talked with him about the deck during the tournament, as well as watching him play a couple games when my own matches were done, I can comment about these criticisms.

Firstly, I don't understand how you claim "without Goyfs you do not have a late game bomb" when clearly Ooze can grow to a much greater extent than Goyf. I watched Steve use an Ooze at 7/7 to punch through a large blocker when Goyf would not have done the same. I think your analysis of the situation is biased and flawed.

Secondly, in regards to Probe: both Steve and I agreed that Probe was key in winning matches. Personally I won at least one game simply due to Probe's information alone, not to mention multiple instances across several matches where the information was critical in allowing me to properly sequence my spells, prepare my strategic lines and setup conditional cards. Steve agreed that running a combination of Probes and Pierces was superior to a combination of Pierces and Snares, and he was very happy about the configuration.

As for the SB he mentioned he was likely going to be immediately changing several cards.

[Sasan]

Hey can you perhaps ask Steve to join this thread? We need some more good bUrg players here.

My opinion about Ooze was based more on the number (one instead of two) and not regarding the card in general. I think Goyf is better
in the end but I understand running Ooze, but two would be a more solid number as one is random.

Concerning Probes: It is a never ending talk that RUG Delver players always have had. There is no real right answer. But we have less flex slots than Canadian, so Probes can lead to cutting some key cards. But again: Probes is not the worst choice in this deck.

I am looking forward to talk to Steve in this thread.

[Pdingo]

Nice Nice finally a top 16 in the USA! :D

@Probe

i only can agree with Sasan. We Need the 60 Cards and Spell snare maybe Pierce are so damn Important. We don't Need Information..

@Goyf and Ooze

Well it's a Meta choice..but i see goyf over the ooze because we dont have enough green mana. ooze can be bolten that't a other reason i dont like him.
Against gy decks Counter and shaman are 90% times enough.

[TheKingslayer]

I feel spell snare helps catch a lot of cards that are potentially game ending. Maybe I'm biased because I play against a lot of Stoneforge Mystic and Tarmogoyf.

[Qweerios]

No one denies that playing Probes has benefits. The information advantage is nice. I am with you there. But we cut some of our best cards. I know that American RUG Delver lists play Probes now. It is the new trend. But the trend will be over soon when people realize that they need 60 cards decks and not 58 card decks with more value.

I fail to understand how people need 60 cards and not 58, or how Probe is not considered a card... That seems to be one of the virtual advantages of Probe, not one of its disadvantages. You aren't cutting your strongest cards or key cards for that matter, you are filling flex slots (AKA: situational cards) with consistency cards that make your core cards more readily available. Wouldn't RUG play 40 cards if they could? I think so yes, because if RUG could play 6 Delvers, they probably would. Consistency is key in RUG. As far as "not being a card" goes, Probe has to be cast, it gives you hand information, it makes you draw a card, and it puts a sorcery in your GY, if thats not a card, I don't know what is.

Then you might ask, why isn't RUG playing 4 Probes then if it is so good? To that I reply, because I am afraid the life cost can become a liability when you cast 2-3 copies per game. Probe is more than a trend, it has been around since its release and when RUG's core cards are well-rounded for the meta, Probe is a good choice.

Spell Pierce is really bad in the current meta consisting of cc2 spells and creatures. I cannot justify running it in the main deck. Everything Pierce is good at can be done with Decays (Planeswalkers, Equipment etc.).

Have you considered Instants and Sorceries? Piercing a T2 main phase Brainstorm is quite common, or a T2 StP being played around Daze. It is safe for a control deck to play around Daze vs. RUG, but unreasonable to play around Pierce in most cases. There is also the issue of Planeswalkers where Pierce doesn't allow a Liliana to make you sacrifice a Mongoose. And for the other Planeswalkers being played? Well those can't exactly be answered with Snare or Decay at all...

Mongoose is bad at multiples? No Sir. It is slow to reach Thresh and Thought Scour is needed? No, RUG Delver never played with Scours or Probes in the past and no one complained about multiple Mongeese or a slow clock. It is play style dependent but you have your fast clock with Delver/Shaman. Mongoose is a mid game card versus midrange and control decks :-)

Here is a very successful RUG list that plays with 3 Thought Scours: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazin...tr13/welcome#1 It's not the first time he and his fellow teammates place in major tournaments using 2-3 Thought Scours. I have used Thought Scour in combination with Delver triggers, DRS, Goyf, Mongoose/Tombstalker before and it is extremely underrated. It also acts as an additional Ponder for cards like LftL, Darkblast, and has fringe applications against decks playing Top, Miracles, Enlightened Tutor, Personal Tutor, or simply turning Submerge into hard removal.

Darkblast is ok but too slow to remove multiple creatures. And -1/-1 does not remove a Shaman or a Stoneforge. It is not the best way to cut your best sideboard spell for a semi good card.

By that logic, Decay is even slower and cannot remove multiple creatures. Granted Darkblast cannot remove DRS or SFM, however, Covenant cannot remove DRS or SFM in time either, which is where they really shine because they give our opponent a tempo advantage and/or color availability. I don't think we have Covenant so that we can nuke DRS on T3-4, but because it is a 1 sided board wipe if timely drawn and used. In order to get the most value out of covenant you must spend a lot of life, and that window of opportunity quickly evaporates when your opponent has a lot of creatures. In practice, covenant's effectiveness is inversely proportional to its availability. Just like Covenant, Darkblast is very matchup-specific. I wouldn't call it a semi-good card because it can potentially convert every single drawn card into hard removal in the matchups I mentioned above. It has less immediate impact than Covenant but it is redundant and much easier to cast. Besides, you will rarely cast more than 1 Covenant per game... not as much so because you win right away, but because you simply cannot afford to get the same value out of it twice. And there you have it, a logical argument as to why I think a split of Dark Blast and Covenant is better than 2 copies of Covenant. I value arguments over opinions, but that's just my personal opinion.

Just my two cents ;-)

[Pdingo]

@Kingslayer

Agree. That's the reason why we should Play Snare over pierce. Sometimes Stoneblade can be a tricky Match up!

[Sasan]

You can hit spells with Snare that make you nearly instant dead :-P With my sideboard you can benefit from Pierce in game 2 and 3 and have only some slight disadvanges versus some decks in game 1. But these disadvantages are compensated by Decay. I feel that Pierce and Probe is a better team than Snare/Probe. But I would not play with Probes in the first place.

[sherko7]

Someone playing BURG got top 8 last weekend here in the PH. Not sure if he lingers around here though. I was playing RUG (I still don't own U. Seas) and we met in the top 8. He beat me 3 games, pretty close fight. Here are a few things regarding the matchup...

1. RUG VS BURG is a bit tricky for RUG. BURG has decays, so Goyfs are pretty clumsy.
2. It was pretty easy to deny BURG off a color. Whether red, black or green (blue of course would be harder). Whenever I had a Goyf in my hand I'd try to deny him off of either black or green so he won't be able to Decay me. I'd save up my wastes for when he misses a land drop before I play my Goyf. At the very least I'd untap with Goyf still in play.
3. During game 3, I was able to cut him off of red and this forced him to hold the Bolt he had while I was down on life. Unfortunately, he drew it after flipping a Delver FTW.
4. He didn't play Goyf, if I remember the decklist correctly he played 4/4/4 of Delver/Goose/DRS.
5. In 3 games, I never had a problem reaching thresh with against an active DRS.
6. Rough//Tumble is pretty live against BURG. I board it in since I board out most counterspells anyway. RUG counterspells are often used to protect threats. Abrupt Decay nullifies this.
7. RUG can beat BURG cards 1 for 1 (of course BURG can beat RUG 1 for 1 as well).
8. I got loam locked game 2 after a hard fought battle over lands I won. So obviously, Loam wins the matchup.

I think the matchup is 50-50. We fought a hard battle and like I said, both decks seem to answer the other 1:1. The board is where it gets tricky. Pyroblasting cantrips after a counter war over Stifle/Wastes are almost always correct. He started games 2 and 3 with a turn 1 Gitaxian Probe which, I think, was the difference. He had all the info in the opening turns and every battle I won was almost as if orchestrated.

[Star|Scream]

Darkblast is ok but too slow to remove multiple creatures. And -1/-1 does not remove a Shaman or a Stoneforge. It is not the best way to cut your best sideboard spell for a semi good card.

Just my two cents ;-)

Darkblast can deal with those creatures if you use it in your upkeep. You do lose your draw step, though, but at least you fill your graveyard for mongoose and shaman.

[Sasan]

@Sherko7: I agree with all of your post. Thanks for that. I think the matchup is slightly in our favor if we play with my list including two Goyfs.

@Star|Scream: Yup. But it is a bit slow.

[Qweerios]

@Sasan,

How is Darkblast slow? It costs 1 mana, it doesn't get any faster than that. You seem to be the only one under the impression that Darkblast is meant to kill DRS or SFM? Correct me if I am wrong, but Darkblast is probably the best card to kill x/1 creatures, and those happen to be quite popular right now. Allow me to list a few off the top of my head that I cared to kill with Darkblast in the past:


Baleful Strix
Phyrexian Revoker
Gravecrawler
Blood Artist
Dark Confidant
Goblin Lackey
Goblin Welder
Goblin Sharpshooter
Grim Lavamancer
Young Pyromancer
Delver of Secrets
Cursecatcher
Silvergill Adept
Snapcaster Mage
Vendilion Clique
Dryad Arbor
Noble Hierarch
Birds of Paradise
Scryb Ranger
Wirewood Symbiote
Quirion Ranger
Llanowar Elves
Elvish Visionary
Priest of Titania
Mother of Runes
Weathered Wayfarer
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Flickerwisp
Aven Mindcensor
Mangara of Corondor
Lingering Souls
Elspeth, Knight-Errant


Darkblast gives you an edge against DnT, Elves, Goblins, Grixis Pyromancer, and Maverick for instance.

[Royce Walter]

@Sasan,

How is Darkblast slow? It costs 1 mana, it doesn't get any faster than that. You seem to be the only one under the impression that Darkblast is meant to kill DRS or SFM? Correct me if I am wrong, but Darkblast is probably the best card to kill x/1 creatures, and those happen to be quite popular right now. Allow me to list a few off the top of my head that I cared to kill with Darkblast in the past:


Baleful Strix
Phyrexian Revoker
Gravecrawler
Blood Artist
Dark Confidant
Goblin Lackey
Goblin Welder
Goblin Sharpshooter
Grim Lavamancer
Young Pyromancer
Delver of Secrets
Cursecatcher
Silvergill Adept
Snapcaster Mage
Vendilion Clique
Dryad Arbor
Noble Hierarch
Birds of Paradise
Scryb Ranger
Wirewood Symbiote
Quirion Ranger
Llanowar Elves
Elvish Visionary
Priest of Titania
Mother of Runes
Weathered Wayfarer
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Flickerwisp
Aven Mindcensor
Mangara of Corondor
Lingering Souls
Elspeth, Knight-Errant


Darkblast gives you an edge against DnT, Elves, Goblins, Grixis Pyromancer, and Maverick for instance.

You killed an elspeth with darkblast? That is impressive.

[Lennard]

You killed an elspeth with darkblast? That is impressive.

not able to think that out? sad.....

[Qweerios]

About as impressive as killing a Lingering Souls right? Considering it's a Sorcery...

I will just go ahead and assume most readers understood what was meant by listing Elspeth.

[Sasan]

ok Darkblast kills one 1/1 per turn for the sake of losing my draw step. What about killing x 1/1s and 1/2s and perhaps Goyf potentially on turn two without losing my draw step? That card exists: It is called Fire Covenant. We have no means to generate card advantage. That is why we need our draw steps. Loam is the only exception as it destroys the opponent's resources and slows his development. Darkblast cannot reach that. We can ask the other fellow bUrg players: Is Darkblast worth a SB slot?

[Pdingo]

@Darkblast
He's a cool card but not that good in a tempodeck like this. why?
-We dont need a lot dredge because it's skeping a draw step.
He doesnt make card advange. Loam are a very diffrent card that us give card backs and makes card advange. Card advenge is very important in a tempo deck!
-What can we kill with blast?
Well a lot like delver and bob of course. But do we need that?
The answer is No ,because we have enough removal+counter.
You need to kill an oppentents shaman instantly. And when we play darkblast twice in a turn with dredge we kill it but makes no card advange. We have better options like bolt! SB options are:
Submerge;) disfigure, grim lavamancer and i like this card a lot on my meta:
Dread of night ;)) important against a lot soul deck or mavericks and death n taxes.
Oh and dont forget the best spell fire coventant.:)

Greets and feel free to post!

[personalbackfire]

Hello all, I played this deck to 12th place this past weekend at SCG Philly. I have started writing a report and will post it within a day or two.

Just to comment on my list real fast (2 Probes 2 Spll Pierce 0 Snare).

I started with the list that Florain Koch posted in a channelfireball article a few months ago. That is where my creature base and sideboard, as well as the rest of the maindeck came from. I didn't know this thread existed, which is too bad since there is a lot of good info in it.

I played that exact maindeck (3 Snare 1 Pierce 0 Probe) with a slightly different sb 2 weekends ago to a 4-2 finish in a 30ish people local tournament.

To be honest I really liked Spell Snare, as it counters a lot in legacy. My biggest issue with the deck, other than the SB was the mana. I really did not think that it was 'rock solid' at all and started to think about ways to improve it. I mulligained a lot with the deck and felt like an additional colored source might be needed, especially since Wasteland pretty much only casts my 1 Ooz.

After talking to some better players they mentioned instead of adding a land, or cutting a waste for another Trop, I should try adding a few probes. The benefits (as everyone knows) is you get free info for basically free, an the mana ratio goes up a tiny bit if you think of probe as not a card. I cut the Snare's instead of Pierce since I figured I have Bolts and Decays to answer 2 drops. This decision was reinforced when I looked at the recent SCG Rug lists that were doing well. Most of them I saw played 2 Probe, 2 Pierce, 4 Daze, 4 Stifle.

I liked how Probe played a lot this past weekend. I feel like it is at its best in the early game. Probing someone turn 1 or 2 just gains you so much info on how you should properly be playing the game. You can not possibly know every card in your opponents hand that in early in the game. I was happy with Pierce but was wondering about Snare. Ultimately it might be a preference to play with Probes or not. I liked the deck both times I've played it.

As a follow up, my mana did not feel bad this weekend either. Obviously I can't say that was all because of Probe, but I am sure it helped in some small way.

I really liked my Ooze both times I've played it and would consider playing the second one. The problem is that there is no room. I would have to cut the probes to fit in the second in, which as I said could go either way.

Another issue I think the deck has isn't so much the ability to close out games but the ability to fight bigger creatures. I am sure that is where the 2 Goyfs (or 2nd Ooze) come in handy.

As far as the Rug match, I didn't play it at SCG but did play it a week ago in a tournament, as well as playing against an additional BUG tempo deck. Deathrite Shaman and Ooze felt like they gave me an edge in the match. Being able to control your opponenets thresh and goyfs seemed to be a big part of the match.

Just my thoughts,
Steve

[Sasan]

Thanks for the information Steve. good to have you here :)

Snares vs Pierce is a meta call as mentioned in the primer. The meta is shifting a bit back from Jund and midrange decks. So perhaps becomes good again. We have to wait.

Probes vs No Probes is a matter of belief. Do we want to play more quality cards
or do we need more cantrips that thin out the deck and make the mana base a little bit better? The biggest disadvantage of Probes seems to be that you can only play one beatstick in the list.

Your sideboard is rock solid and great. I would perhaps find room for another counter there ;-)

Although I do not agree with all of your choices I am really happy for your great finish. I will link your tournament report in the primer so that it does not get lost here. Just looking forward to it :-P

[Pdingo]

nice finish!

The only thing i don't like are the Probes. Yes they give us Information and a Card. But do we really Need that in bUrg? Probes are bad in the Lategame. Counter to but Probes are bader i think.
Probes are nice in the Starthand. But Counter(Snare/Pierce)too and i think they are a lot more important.

The Ooze is still a meta choice.

Graatz to the nice finish men!

Feel free to post