Besides countering it, which isn't the easiest thing to do, Exquisite Firecraft, Vortex, and/or establishing a board of Prowess creatures so that you get value out of your spells even if they're countered.Originally Posted by KobeBryan
Basically, you play around it.
Roses are colorless.
Violets are colorless.
Everything is nothing.
Also, if you have Sulfur Elemental in your side, it's nigh counterbalance proof, especially if you prime the stack with something else (they adjust with top, after resolution, you respond with Sulfur which locks the stack now that you know they have a 1 or 2 on top.)
In my experience:
~ You want to beat it and/or top on the stack.
~ Board into REB to help stop Counterbalance before it lands... and Sulfuric Vortex. They usually won't have a three to counter/top the vortex and you should be ahead in damage.
~ Sometimes it's about getting that last bit of damage through. Bolt them, in response to their top activation, play something else, keep loading the stack till they're tapped out then hit them with Price or Fireblast.
I'd really like to hear other peoples' tactics here though. So many Miracles players in my meta.
Here's what I'll be sleeving up tonight:
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Stormchaser Mage
2 Snapcaster Mage
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
2 Price of Progress
2 Lava Dart
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
3 Gitaxian Probe
2 Vapor Snag
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Polluted Delta
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Volcanic Island
2 Island
2 Mountain
SIDEBOARD:
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Price of Progress
2 Volcanic Fallout
2 Exquisite Firecraft
2 Smash to Smithereens
1 Flusterstorm
1 Pyrostatic Pillar
1 Sulfuric Vortex
If anybody has any questions I'll be happy to answer them. Trying out Darts.
Roses are colorless.
Violets are colorless.
Everything is nothing.
I might try Flame Jab if you're looking at Lava Dart. Might let you cast it more than once by discarding any additional land.
Cockatrice: Bosque
The problem I have with Flame Jab is that it's a sorcery. That's a big deal. It's the difference between killing Mom and staring at her while she blanks your hand. Instant burn also functions as a pump spell in this deck.
Roses are colorless.
Violets are colorless.
Everything is nothing.
Yeah, I'm gonna admit that I'd forgotten it was a Sorcery. Lava Dart it is, my bad.
Cockatrice: Bosque
So, Lava Dart was fine, but I'm moving on from this deck. A few things I don't like about it:
- I don't like Chain Lightning. It being a sorcery means it just doesn't do what I need it to do.
- I don't like playing Price of Progress over Wasteland. There are too many value lands in the format, and Waste is still good against decks that play very few whereas Price is just shitty. It's too much variance for me. The deck literally lives and dies by Price of Progress's value.
- I don't like playing Snapcaster in this deck. He's always been a dead draw for me. I've drawn them multiple times and they were either pitched to Force of Will, shuffled back in via Brainstorm, or sat in my hand and did nothing.
- I don't like Swiftspear, surprisingly. Stormchaser Mage is fine thanks to flying, but Swiftspear was just dead to me after turn 3 in almost every game I drew them. It's also nowhere near enough of a clock when it's on the table by itself.
- I don't like my only counterspells being Force of Will and I don't like Force of Will. The card disadvantage it brings is real, to the point where if you cast a Force you're probably going to lose the game four turns later after you run out of cards. Also since you're playing Chain Lightning instead of Daze you don't have enough pitch cards. Stormchaser keeps the blue count high but pitching one of your few threats really sucks.
It's possible some of this is due to my playstyle, but I've played Prowess builds before in Legacy and Modern and this one just isn't there. You'll win some games, but this deck will never be higher than tier 2 as constructed. It just doesn't play like it.
Things I would try to do to improve the deck:
- Mizzium Skin. Countering a removal spell is fucking huge, and this one counters them all.
- Splash black for discard, perhaps. Counterspells are really bad in this deck (Skin can be played proactively so it's not the worst).
- Incorporate some sort of evasion-granting effects. I've used Distortion Strike to great success in Modern, and it's possible it could be replicated here. Artful Dodge and Slip Through Space are the other options here in UR. Aphotic Wisps is also a possibility.
- Play something with Delve. You need to take advantage of all the velocity this deck is throwing around. This likely would require a black or green splash because the legal blue Delve spells are actual trash.
- Card. Draw. Maybe Bob. Maybe Painful Truths or Skeletal Scrying or Night's Whisper. Hell, maybe Ancestral Vision. You could even try Reforge the Soul or Abbot. You need card draw, not just cantrips. You run out of cards too fast and then you're just hoping to draw the remaining points of burn. This is why Cruise Delver was such a house: drawing three cards for one mana was amazing for this deck. Without that kind of raw card advantage, it's just not quite good enough.
It's possible there is a competitive deck here, but from my perspective I've given up a great matchup against Storm in order to lose a small percentage against the rest of the field. I'm not even sure where I picked up percentage points in terms of matchups.
FWIW, I beat the snot out of a bad Jeskai Stoneblade player, got crushed by Shardless, and got beaten by Death and Taxes. Reasons for my losses are peppered throughout the above notes.
Roses are colorless.
Violets are colorless.
Everything is nothing.
This is very interesting results, I haven't tested PoP yet, originally I didn't include because of non-basic lands but I think if I can get out ahead, PoP is very effective. I also think Sensei's Divining Top is powerful for finding cards as well as triggering Prowess. Grim Lavamancer was super effective in removing blockers. Last week I played something similar with Black splash, Painful Truth was countered by couterbalance the only time I cast it. Murderous Cuts were not used in any capacity.
Has anyone tried Twisted Image? both Swiftspear and Stormchaser have higher toughness than power, and also draws a card.
I'll be running this for the weekly:
4 Volcanic Island
2 Island
2 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Fetchlands
2 Mishra's Factory
4 Delver
4 Monastary Swiftspear
4 Stormchaser mage
1 Grim Lavamancer
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
2 Price of Progress
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
2 Daze
3 Ponder
3 Gitaxian Probe
3 Sensei's Divining Top
Deck doesn't make sense. 4 volcs and factories with price
Its probably bad, but I figure I never have more than 3 lands out anyways and when I play Price I am probably trying to win the game with it.
Hi there,
I read the posts from Delvis (his list & report) and frankly, this is quite funny.
Just a quick question: did you play the deck before? I mean UR Delver. Before the ban of Dig Through Time? of Treasure Cruise? or maybe even before both cards were printed?
I do not want to sound aggro there but your 'impressions' regarding the reliability of Price of Progress, the effect of Chain lightning or Snapcaster Mage make me wonder what was your true intents when you put up the deck together and what were your expectations. If you never played the deck in its 'original shape', you should then try netdecking some proposed by Andrew.Schneider. This is the 'essence' of this archetype.
I do not know how's your local meta but frankly, if there is one card which is giving the deck its sheer raw power right now, be it in Burn or UR Delver, it is PoP. The only Tier 1 deck which is not really affected or bothered by it is Miracle. I reckon this might be a problem if 80% of the decks being played in your meta are Miracles but well. Even Elfball is subject to a 6 hit-points PoP very easily. Nothing to sneeze at.
This being said, Wasteland is a house too. But to consider PoP to be a bad card in this shell is a tad off.
Now the question on Stormchaser:
I personally think this card is bad. To be good, it deserves a deck built with the sole purpose of killing with huge prowess and that induces a lot of tinkering and most certainly to play with cards like Mutagenic Growth, Probes and what not. So yes, in such shell, PoP is too expensive maybe but then you should be running Fireblast over it.
So yes, trying to combine too many things together does not create a deck which would play out reliably.
M2c
I was a huge advocate of this deck pre treasure cruise ban, and tried to force the issue as long as possible when dig was the only option. The problem I kept running into was the same one Delvis described, you can't keep card in hand. When TC was around this was easy you just kept reloading with it, sometimes chaining TCs together. The best option I've found lately is a risky one in Day's Undoing, I never lost a game I resolved it in. I also agree that the wasteland package seems much stronger than the maindeck PoP plan. I have no problem with bringing PoP out of the board and wasteland actually allows you to not kill yourself with it.
Yes, I have; I started in Legacy with UR Delver. I've also played both aggro and aggro-control for about a decade. I will grant you that it's been a while, and I've been playing Grixis lists for the past few months. But I'm not a novice. You can take or leave my input, I'm just putting it out there for others to do with it what they will. I'm not claiming I know everything.
PoP is the strongest card in the deck. That's why I said the deck lives and dies by it. PoP is how you make up for the lack of raw card advantage in the list: you hit them for 6-10 in one spell, which, according to the Philosophy of Fire, is anywhere from 3-5 cards' worth of burn.
If PoP is a dead card, this deck (at least the non-Wasteland version) is probably going to lose. You can't make up those lost points, barring statistical outliers like an opponent's mull to 4.
Right. It does something the deck already does, which is present a mid-sized evasive threat that's vulnerable to spot removal. Delver of Secrets already does this. Young Pyromancer, on the other hand, allows you to go wide. It's slower, but it's also better with a reactive gameplan, which lets you interact with your opponent rather than rely on drawing lots of burn. We seem to agree here. In my testing, the card felt weak. Maybe it's good in concert with Pyro but I don't feel like it's an adequate replacement for it.
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Eli Kassis Top 8'd an EE Satellite in Baltimore this weekend playing this deck. His list had Compulsive Research in it. That's the card draw I was talking about. He was also playing Wastelands and zero PoPs main (might have had some side, can't recall). I have his full list on my phone but I don't have access to my phone right now. I can post it later if people are interested.
Roses are colorless.
Violets are colorless.
Everything is nothing.
Did Eli Kassis play Stormchaser?
i'm interested with this cuz i have a game of bet for Stormchaser if this mage can hit a top8 as maindeck 3 copies in a 64+ players event before 20 March on tcdecks and i vote YES lol.
I think so yes. http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...872#post928872
Cockatrice: Bosque
Thank u for the link!
And if i'm not misscount something there is no Stormchaser in his maindeck.
i've posted my question there.
Maybe he confused Snapcaster with Stormchaser. Easy enough mistake.
See comments from people that were there.
Cockatrice: Bosque
Wow 2 compulsive research and 2 pyroblast main deck. Is compulsive research the next best draw spell since losing cruise? I feel like there must be some instant alternative...
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