[Deck] Grixis Tempo

[Agrippa91]

I think this is similar to the deck I played against. It seems that some number of WLs are still valuable here?

That depends how you want to play out, basically there's two routes:
1. Stripping their hand off threats and countering their big stuff (letting their Explorers resolve) In this case you want all Therapies and all Forces, but since you let the opponent's mana flow your Dazes and Wastelands get worse.
2. Restricting their mana: I don't know it that's really possible if you don't have Stifle for fetchlands and explorers, they can just fetch for basics all day.

Seems like you tried a mixture of both, countering their explorers, but also trying to counter their big stuff. Now your opponent just had to name Force with his Cabal Therapy to make sure his explorer resolved.

So yeah, generally I'd advise you to go the long route with your deck (1), hoping they flood out and your Brainstorms (shuffling lands away) carry the day. A Painful Truths might help in the SB, I'd generally advise 1-2 against fair decks.

[Jaytron]

That depends how you want to play out, basically there's two routes:
1. Stripping their hand off threats and countering their big stuff (letting their Explorers resolve) In this case you want all Therapies and all Forces, but since you let the opponent's mana flow your Dazes and Wastelands get worse.
2. Restricting their mana: I don't know it that's really possible if you don't have Stifle for fetchlands and explorers, they can just fetch for basics all day.

Seems like you tried a mixture of both, countering their explorers, but also trying to counter their big stuff. Now your opponent just had to name Force with his Cabal Therapy to make sure his explorer resolved.

So yeah, generally I'd advise you to go the long route with your deck (1), hoping they flood out and your Brainstorms (shuffling lands away) carry the day. A Painful Truths might help in the SB, I'd generally advise 1-2 against fair decks.

Yeah I'm going to try 2 Painful Truths in the board. Also going to try a few Baleful Strix with how creature heavy my local meta is. I may just take Noah's list to the next weekly to see how it feels.

I'm debating on his 2 cabals main vs my decays main though.

[Hamsert]

Yeah I'm going to try 2 Painful Truths in the board. Also going to try a few Baleful Strix with how creature heavy my local meta is. I may just take Noah's list to the next weekly to see how it feels.

I'm debating on his 2 cabals main vs my decays main though.

I don't know how many Eldrazis are in your meta but you could try a Dismember for a/the Decays? I also think that you could switch the Forked Bolt for a Dismember if there are more big creature match-ups.

[Jaytron]

I don't know how many Eldrazis are in your meta but you could try a Dismember for a/the Decays? I also think that you could switch the Forked Bolt for a Dismember if there are more big creature match-ups.

Last week, just one.

This was the meta last week:
Storm
Infect
Lands
Dragon Stompy
Death & Taxes X 3
Grixis Delver x 3
Affinity
Fish
Nic Fit X 2
Miracles
Rug Delver
Bug delver
Show & Tell
Peter's Combo
Eldrazi
Lands Pox
Jund

Pretty diverse meta, tbh. Sometimes there are 2 Miracles players. I've actually been mulling over taking UWr Delver one week, just because it has even more removal. Dismember would have a number of uses in this meta though, I've had it in/out of my sideboard. Might put it in MB for one of my forked bolts or decays

[Agrippa91]

Google doesn't tell me anything, what's "Peter's combo"?

[Jaytron]

Google doesn't tell me anything, what's "Peter's combo"?

Hahaha, sorry that was a copy paste. Peter is a local player that will run a funky combo deck for fun each week. He's a very skilled player so he seems to make them work. I haven't seen him bring the same deck more than once, this week he was on a UR Painter type list.

[Agrippa91]

I think I learned a few lessons these past days after Philly I dedicated to trying out new stuff in my deck:

1. Lesson: Never abandon your game plan:
I've read it earlier in various sideboard-guides, but was thinking I could go BUG-Delver-value-style and just outgrind Jund and Shardless with stifle. BIG fail, even with Painful Truths. The truth is: I lost almost every game I cast Painful Truths. Now why is that? Didn't Noah Walker run 2 in his sb?
That lead me to another conclusion:

2. There're essential differences between Grixis with Stifle and Grixis without Stifle.
With MTG-coverages and sites like mtgtop8 messing up the Delver strategies all the time, calling Grixis often times 4c-Delver or even UR-Delver I failed to notice that there's a difference between the Grixis-Delver-builds themselves. And that's not the mere 4 cards difference but rather stretches to the sideboard and the game plan itself:

a) The Cabal Therapy route
With Therapy we lose tempo by not advancing the board, attacking their hand. I don't say that is bad, but when going this route we should understand that it automatically results in longer games since we both advance the board less every turn while still hitting our land drops (more or less)
Noah's Painful Truths shine in this strategy as well as the Baleful Strixes and Lavamancer he had in his side: He wanted to invest in the value-game rather than the RUG-Delver-like stifle-plan.
The Clique assured him here, too, that his opponent's topdecks were less impactful, going the subtle route between grinding him out and putting on aggression (with the nice side-effect that this card is awesome against Lands and Miracles, too).
Noah's list was closer to BUG-Delver than to RUG-Delver.

I though I could do the same with my stifle-build, just slamming in Painful Truths in the SB, but failed horribly. Why? This is how I see it:

b) The Stifle route
With stifle you gain tempo, namely preventing your opponent from hitting his land drops. It's more than just mana-screwing your opponent, hoping they don't draw enough lands, though that's certainly part of it.
It's committing all of your resources to the board, countering spells that cost a lot of mana with only one or even zero mana. You gain tempo by being able to do more things than the opponent, e.g. killing something AND committing something to the board.
I realized that boarding in cards like Painful Truths or Kolagan's Command against BGx doesn't do much when you're on the Stifle plan, you halfhearted commit to the value-plan without actually having a chance to compete with these decks that compete fully on this "fair" level.

So what to play instead of Painful Truths in the SB? Here's where two old-time-favorites of mine come out again:
Fire Covenant:
I'm still amazed how much this card gets done in fair matchups, be it against Shardless, Jund, D&T, Elves or Maverick. It's simply amazing not only because it kills a lot of creatures at a lower cost the opponent spent to cast them, but gives Stifle-players the sort of card-advantage they need: The one on the board!
Note that since you don't want to have more than one Gitaxian Probes in post-SB, you should have enough life to play with!
Divert:
Some people love it, some hate it, here is why I think it's good in Grixis-stifle against BGx: It's good against the two best cards against us: Abrupt Decay and Hymn to Tourach. The trick is to leave 1 mana open pretty much the entire game, just to represent Spell Pierce and Stifle as well so the opponent has to either play around it or into it. As soon as we would tap-out for a big monster or card-advantage, the opponent would just Cast Hymn to Tourach and crack his fetchlands, flawing our game-plan.
The only thing why this works is because we're also committing to the board at the same time, forcing our opponent to react instead of just sitting it out until he draws enough lands, we have to use the tempo we gained with our creatures.

3. Cabal Therapy has a role in both decks, but fulfills different purposes:
In the Cabal-Therapy-build you want to get value out of your Therapies. That's why you play them in the mainboard and that's why you should leave them in against most fair and grindy matches alongside the other grindy cards from your sb.
In the Stifle-build you want to concentrate on tempo. You really only want Stifle against either combo (to give you a second angle of attack) or against decks that show you cards they won't cast this turn or don't have a fetchland-landbase. D&T with Stoneforge Mystic comes to mind, Silvergill Adept (since stifle is horrible against Merfolk anyways) or goblins (ringleader, matron).

4. The morale of the story?
In my oppinion the answer to the much-asked question of "should I play Stifle, Therapy or both" is
What do you want to achieve?
You should be sure about what playstyle you want to commit and sculpt your board accordingly, it's more than the 4 slots in the mainboard, it's about wether you want to be able to tempo them out in a classic style or grind them out in a low-to-the-ground version like BUG does (but with Bolts)

I firmly believe though that you should pick one style, roll with it and expand it to the sideboard. Overall you'll be playing against your opponents mostly with you sideboarded deck.

Though I tried an objective approach to this topic I'm aware that I can only report subjectively from my own point of view, so I'd be glad if you would point out flaws of logics or just your own input on this topic.

[Agrippa91]

That said I'd like to show the new version of my Stifle build. I'm choosing to make a new post because stuff I'll say here is subjectively on purpose while the subjective stuff you can find in the last post is unintentionally.

First of all: Why do I still want to play Stifle in Grixis?
With Noah's Walker's awesome BUG-like Grixis version in mind in my opinion Stifle still has advantages that the midrange version of Grixis just can't achieve:
1. It's better against Wasteland
Stifle is a beast in the Delver mirror, allowing us to decide wether we want to protect our own wastelands or preventing the enemy from mana. Against Lands I feel that the port-wasteland-stage-fights can be won with stifle while allowing us to keep wasteland-loam-locks from lands and 4c-loam under control, timewalking the opponent that tries to screw us while we can advance our hand and board.
2. It makes our Dazes better
I can't stress enough how much of a difference this can be. Going up against a player that has 2-4 Basics in his deck with stifle-waste instead of only waste makes a world of difference. You see this especially against Combo like Sneak & Show and Storm where (imo) Daze is pretty much useless when you don't have stifles to prevent them from fetching for basics so escape your wastelands.
3. It allows the full splash of green post-sb, even against Wasteland-deck
Now this is big. While Tropical is often times an annoyance in traditional Grixis, due to the ability to prevent it from Wasteland and the second Tropical from the side we get access to 3 Abrupt Decays for pretty much all the things that are supposed to kill us: Counterbalance, Equipment, Chalice+Trini, Rest in Peace, Choke, Molten Vortex, Expedition, Tarmogoyf, Endless One to name just a few.
I even splash for a fourth card in Krosan Grip because I want an answer Batterskull, Moat, Humility, Sneak Attack (also answers their Defense Grid) in the grindy matchups where Stifle and Daze might not shine, it's also awesome against an active Jitte or Vial because nobody plays around it.
This allows us to cut Force of Will in every fair matchup (not counting those with 4-of lock pieces) besides RUG or UR-Delver where we still want 1-2 FoWs against fast starts because tempo is so important in these matchups.

Here's my trimmed-down list. Note that I play a few more narrow cards now, resulting in bringing in only 4-6 cards in most matchups, being able to keep the general tempo-plan flowing (more only in matchups that are "strange", e.g. because my Stifles, Wastelands or Dazes don't work). I also cut down on the Pyromancer-package to 3-3-3 because having multiple YPs/Probes in the beginning is clunky while I generally have a good idea of what to name in the matchups I bring in Cabal Therapy anyways.

Lands (18):
4x Flooded Strand
4x Polluted Delta
3x Volcanic Island
2x Underground Sea
1x Tropical Island
4x Wasteland

Creatures (13):
4x Deathrite Shaman
4x Delver of Secrets
3x Young Pyromancer
2x Gurmag Angler

Spells (29):
4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
3x Gitaxian Probe
4x Force of Will
4x Daze
4x Stifle
4x Lightning Bolt
1x Spell Pierce
1x Forked Bolt

Sideboard (15):
1x Surgical Extraction
1x Pithing Needle
1x Invasive Surgery
1x Pyroblast
1x Hydroblast
3x Cabal Therapy
1x Krosan Grip
3x Abrupt Decay
1x Fire Covenant
1x Divert
1x Tropical Island

[Jaytron]

Great two posts, and great discussion to bring up.

I also believe there are big differences between stifle lists and non stifle lists. Maybe that's why Fire Covenant didn't feel great in my non-stifle list that wants to go a longer game.

This may be a discussion for another thread, but it seems that BUG Lists are moving away from the grindy hymn lili game and back onto the stile plan.

Personally I've moved away from stifle, because it didn't seem as useful in my local meta. Any thoughts on why most Grixis lists are moving away themselves? Noah, Basteki, Demicco, etc.

[cherson]

Fire Covenant:
I'm still amazed how much this card gets done in fair matchups, be it against Shardless, Jund, D&T, Elves or Maverick. It's simply amazing not only because it kills a lot of creatures at a lower cost the opponent spent to cast them, but gives Stifle-players the sort of card-advantage they need: The one on the board!

The only downside I see is the target effect right? Mongoose, mother of runes, tnn.. These are basically the cards I can't get rid of with bolt or forked bolt and need mass removal like toxic.

[Agrippa91]

Great two posts, and great discussion to bring up.

I also believe there are big differences between stifle lists and non stifle lists. Maybe that's why Fire Covenant didn't feel great in my non-stifle list that wants to go a longer game.

This may be a discussion for another thread, but it seems that BUG Lists are moving away from the grindy hymn lili game and back onto the stile plan.

Fire Covenant is really only very good if you have like no other cards that want you to pay life. I guess you also ran Gitaxian Probes? The thing is that once they hit you a few times with Goyf your Covenants already become really tight. Also the later the game goes the lower the life totals get so I guess the slightly more aggressive Stifle variant is better here. Fire Covenant can win you the game when you're at 10, but at 5 it becomes difficult.
Have you tried Painful Truths? The total lifeloss of Probes and Painful Truths (let's say about 10 in total) seems very close to the one from Fire Covenenant.

Personally I've moved away from stifle, because it didn't seem as useful in my local meta. Any thoughts on why most Grixis lists are moving away themselves? Noah, Basteki, Demicco, etc.

I think that most Grixis pilots move away from the Stifle-list because in some matchups you just don't have enough good cards after boarding. Against D&T Stifle and most countermagic is bad, so you'll need a healthy amount of cards in you SB.
Most important: Miracles, especially counterbalance! We see a surprising amount of mainboard hate against this deck, be it 2x Pyroblast or 2x Therapy 1x Clique and even Engineered Explosives in the SB over something like Dread of Night seems to imply that Noah and other pilots really have this deck on the radar.

Abrupt Decay and Krosan Grip help me in these situations where Stifle is bad (D&T, Merfolk, Elves, MUD, Edrazi, Painter, Tezzeret, Infect, Deadguy to name a few) by providing me with a card that's just good in general against "fair" strategies, this way I don't have to keep in Force of Will all the time because all my other SB cards are bad.

[about Fire Covenant]The only downside I see is the target effect right? Mongoose, mother of runes, tnn.. These are basically the cards I can't get rid of with bolt or forked bolt and need mass removal like toxic.

Against the named decks, D&T is the only one I would bring in this card:
I already like Forked Bolt as a 1-for-1, asking them to decide between Mother and e.g. Thalia. Similarly with Fire Covenant they can keep as many creatures as they have Moms (so 1-2 max mostly) and even those are unprotected for the rest of the turn. Remember that you can also swing in really brutal and then, when they're forced to block and activate Mom, Fire Covenant in response and annihilate the whole board without one of your creatures taking damage.

RUG's Nimble Mongoose I mostly stall with YP and Angler, it's still a very good card, though you can try to keep it down with DRS early. I wouldn't recommend bringing in Fire Covenant against RUG though since when it gets countered (which is likely when you invest 3 mana and they have Dazes and Spell Pierces) you're absolutely blown out, rather leave in like 2 FoWs to counter Rough/Tumble and creatures you can't deal with.

TNN has the downside that it costs 3 mana, so it's dazeable often times when you play the Stifle package, it also gets countered by Pyroblast.
Against Delver-variants that don't play white TNN is often times just a super expensive card that you can Daze most of the time.
Against white decks you have Therapies out of the board against their Stoneforges anyways, so often times you see the card coming and evtl. discard it by sacrificing e.g. a DRS.
Again I wouldn't recommend bringing in Fire Covenant against Delver variants, it could be good against Esper though (they play no Lightning Bolts to punish you, therefore Lingering Souls).
When you're at the point where an unequipped True-Name wins the game you've lost most of the times anyways, though.

What are the alternatives other than Fire Covenant?
Toxic Deluge seems bad since it kills our own creatures, Sudden Demise has the same problem than Covenant against Mother and True-Name since protection prevents regular damage. There's Dread of Night which I only would recommend when your metagame demands it (way more Maverick and D&T players than BGx, Elves and Infect players)

Noah Walker plays a 1-of Engineered Explosives you might want to look into, seems interesting against various decks including Miracles and D&T.

[maharis]

I tested a new list last night against a friend running Eldrazi and Doomsday.

4 Delver of Secrets
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Gurmag Angler
1 Tombstalker
1 Vendilion Clique

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
3 Hymn to Tourach
3 Stifle
2 Spell Pierce
1 Fire / Ice
1 Dismember

4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands

I was better than 50/50 in our games, with Doomsday being a better matchup than Eldrazi. Basically came down to whether or not he drew Reality Smasher. Doomsday (and I'm assuming other combo deck) has a lot of trouble dealing with counters and discard and a fast clock.

I really liked it though. You basically get a little of everything. I felt that this was slightly higher velocity than YP lists since you were pretty much always dropping T1 threat, disrupting on turn 2, then dropping a huge dude to finish them off at the end. Needs more testing but I think this might be a viable build.

[magical-yata]

I played in a 19 Person Legacy FNM Last Night with Grixis Delver.

The list I played

Lands (18):
4x Wasteland
4x Flooded Strand
3x Misty Rainforest
3x Volcanic Island
2x Underground Sea
1x Tropical Island
1x Polluted Delta

Creatures (14):
4x Deathrite Shaman
4x Delver of Secrets
3x Young Pyromancer
2x Gurmag Angler
1x True-Name Nemesis

Spells (28):
4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
4x Gitaxian Probe
4x Force of Will
4x Daze
4x Lightning Bolt
2x Forked Bolt
2x Cabal Therapy

Sideboard (15):
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Pyroblast
2x Ancient Grudge
2x Baleful Strix
1x Painful Truths
1x Grim Lavamancer
1x Pithing Needle
1x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Winter's Orb
1x Electrickery
1x Dismember

Round 1 Vs Infect
Game 1: I had a turn 1 Deathrite and turn 2 Delver along with enough Lighting Bolts to prevent him from getting anything going.
Game 2: I had a fast clock with multiple Delvers, but lose to a topdecked Berserk to go with an in hand Invigorate FTW.
Game 3: Forked Bolt, Electrickery, and Baleful Strixes keep him off balance long enough to pull together a W.

Round 2 Vs Shardless BUG
Game 1: I had a great start with Deathrite, Pyromancer, Delver and a few Bolts to kill his Deathrites to choke him on mana a bit. I end up getting blown out by a Toxic Deluge. I did not know that was a mainboard card these days. Whoops.

Game 2: I end up grinding him down to 1 with Pyromancer/Deathrite/Delver before he stabilizes at 1 life with a Goyf on the board vs just a Pyromancer while I have multiple lands in hand. I end up winning by Dazing his kill spell on the Pyromancer just to keep the lethal threat on the table. I resolve a Deathrite the next turn and push through for lethal

Game 3: He plays Bayou and passes Turn 1. I play a Delver on my turn. He plays Tar Pit and Deathrite and passes. I wasteland the Tar Pit and Bolt Shaman which he forces and I force back. I end up beating down with Delver with him unable to stitch anything together.

Round 3 Vs Goblins
Game 1: I play Deathrite turn 1. He plays Cavern, Lackey. I wasteland Cavern and Forked Bolt Lackey. He doesn't draw a land for the rest of the game.
Game 2: He mulligans to 5. I answer all of his creatures with removal and win relatively quickly.

Round 4 Vs Elves
Game 1: Forked Bolt, Lighting Bolt, and Pyromancer do a good job of clearing his threats before presenting lethal
Game 2: The big turn in this game revolved around responding to a Quiron Ranger activation with overload Electrickery to kill it, Arbor, and a Visionary. I grind him out with Pyromancer and Gurmag a few turns later.

Round 5 Vs Eldrazi
We intentionally draw.

Thoughts on the deck
I loved the Forked Bolts. I'm not sure if Therapy is good enough to have them mainboard, but I think they are certainly better than 4 Stifle. I think the problem with playing 4 Stifle in the deck is that you really don't have a lot of great opportunities to hold it up, and the lack of removal really starts to hurt you vs creature decks.

I never drew True-Name Nemesis, but I wanted it as a better card than Clique vs Eldrazi.

I didn't own a Darkblast or it would have been in the sideboard over a Surgical Extraction.

[Agrippa91]

So how do you defeat white decks? I guess your deck is pretty good in a BUG-heavy environment, but Counterbalance and RIP seem to be issues with your deck since you rely on the graveyard heavily, unless RUG Delver you don't have the colors though to get rid of it.
Have you made any sideboard choices yet? Considering that you play most of the games with your post-sideboard deck this should be rather interesting.

Hymn to Tourach is an interesting choice since it can discard lands and so disrupt the opponent's mana similarly to Stifle. It just feels weird to me to have them both in the deck since Hymn eats a lot of mana (you basically want to cast it as early as possible), but with Stifle you just want to keep open mana as often as possible. The clique I find quite strange since it doesn't fit in the mana-denial plan but rather in the "get you flooded" plan. It of course seems nice against both combo and Eldrazi though.
I'd be interested how your deck plays out against grindy decks (Shardless, Jund, Miracles<-if you have a good pilot) or heavy mana-denial decks (RUG-Delver, D&T).

Edit: @magical-yata Thanks for the tournament report! Is it possible that there's a lot of fair stuff going on in your group? It's just that I see pretty much no combo hate in your sideboard.

It would be interesting though how you sideboarded against the different decks.

I actually think the Clique could be rather interesting against Eldrazi since they rely on their topdeck heavily. Denying them a big creature while you have a flyer seems almost better than a 3/1 that still can't block a reality smasher. The card would also allow you one more look for your Therapies.

[magical-yata]

So how do you defeat white decks? I guess your deck is pretty good in a BUG-heavy environment, but Counterbalance and RIP seem to be issues with your deck since you rely on the graveyard heavily, unless RUG Delver you don't have the colors though to get rid of it.
Have you made any sideboard choices yet? Considering that you play most of the games with your post-sideboard deck this should be rather interesting.

Hymn to Tourach is an interesting choice since it can discard lands and so disrupt the opponent's mana similarly to Stifle. It just feels weird to me to have them both in the deck since Hymn eats a lot of mana (you basically want to cast it as early as possible), but with Stifle you just want to keep open mana as often as possible. The clique I find quite strange since it doesn't fit in the mana-denial plan but rather in the "get you flooded" plan. It of course seems nice against both combo and Eldrazi though.
I'd be interested how your deck plays out against grindy decks (Shardless, Jund, Miracles<-if you have a good pilot) or heavy mana-denial decks (RUG-Delver, D&T).

Edit: @magical-yata Thanks for the tournament report! Is it possible that there's a lot of fair stuff going on in your group? It's just that I see pretty much no combo hate in your sideboard.

It would be interesting though how you sideboarded against the different decks.

I actually think the Clique could be rather interesting against Eldrazi since they rely on their topdeck heavily. Denying them a big creature while you have a flyer seems almost better than a 3/1 that still can't block a reality smasher. The card would also allow you one more look for your Therapies.

I agree that Clique may be better than True-Name Nemesis. I just wanted to test out a more aggressive creature in what I expected to be a primarily creature based metagame.

Most of my sideboarding consisted of -4 Daze, -2 Force of Will depending on whether I was on the play or not. I'd also trim on Gitaxian Probes/Therapy if I had a bunch of stuff I wanted to bring in.

This is my second FNM at this location. Week 1, I saw zero Storm, a lot of fair creature decks, 1 Miracles, 1 Painter. This led to my decision to include a second Ancient Grudge, Winter's Orb, Lavamancer, and Electrickery. I trimmed Cabal Therapy/Flusterstorm to make these swaps.

If I were going to a SCG Event or something similar I'd probably have this as my sideboard.

Sideboard:15
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Flusterstorm
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Darkblast
1 Winter's Orb (Trying to find something for Miracles. This may or may not be better than Null Rod)
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Pyroblast
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Dread of Night
1 Dismember
1 Baleful Strix/Second Dismember
1 Painful Truths/Ancestral Vision
1 Pithing Needle
1 Electrickery

I'd probably start there and make adjustments up and down based on what's most popular at the time. I'm a big fan of silver bullet style sideboards in Delver decks.

[maharis]

So how do you defeat white decks? I guess your deck is pretty good in a BUG-heavy environment, but Counterbalance and RIP seem to be issues with your deck since you rely on the graveyard heavily, unless RUG Delver you don't have the colors though to get rid of it.
Have you made any sideboard choices yet? Considering that you play most of the games with your post-sideboard deck this should be rather interesting.

Probably something like this:

2 Spell Snare
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Flusterstorm
1 Tropical Island
1 Null Rod
1 Smash to Smithereens
1 Dread of Night
1 Pithing Needle
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Pyroblast

I think it might be a little soft to Lands but I don't know anyone who wants to test that haha

[Agrippa91]

I don't know about Tropical for only 2 cards. Also Spell Snare seems more of a maindeck card, you propably want more narrow cards.

[Figurative]

Hey guys,
I currently have legacy merfolk. It's a fine starter deck, but I would like to upgrade eventually because I'm not sure how good it is and it really isn't that special of a deck to me though I do enjoy it. Thinking of getting into grixis delver, after I playtested with my friend yesterday and fell in love with the deck. A couple questions:

1. How good is grixis delver for someone newish to legacy? I know a decent amount about the meta but I haven't played too much.
2. How cheap can it be built? Got the forces, the khans fetches a single wasteland, the delvers, and some other cards sometimes run (playset of true name, one vendillion clique) but I would have to buy/trade for the rest which would push my budget a bit.
3. What are it's good bad mus? This confuses me a bit as I've heard it's bad against fair decks, bad against aggro (i.e. burn, merfolk), and really only good against combo. This doesn't sound like the makeup for a tier 1 deck though I could be wrong.

Thanks!

[maharis]

Hey guys,
I currently have legacy merfolk. It's a fine starter deck, but I would like to upgrade eventually because I'm not sure how good it is and it really isn't that special of a deck to me though I do enjoy it. Thinking of getting into grixis delver, after I playtested with my friend yesterday and fell in love with the deck. A couple questions:

1. How good is grixis delver for someone newish to legacy? I know a decent amount about the meta but I haven't played too much.
2. How cheap can it be built? Got the forces, the khans fetches a single wasteland, the delvers, and some other cards sometimes run (playset of true name, one vendillion clique) but I would have to buy/trade for the rest which would push my budget a bit.
3. What are it's good bad mus? This confuses me a bit as I've heard it's bad against fair decks, bad against aggro (i.e. burn, merfolk), and really only good against combo. This doesn't sound like the makeup for a tier 1 deck though I could be wrong.

Thanks!

1. Well, Cabal Therapy and Stifle are acquired skills -- no matter which build you go with you will be playing one of these two cards. The only way to get better is practice so if you like playing the deck, you'll eventually learn it. That being said, your deck has Brainstorm and Deathrite Shaman, which solve all your problems.

2. Gotta be straight-up here: Yes, you need all the expensive lands. You can play shocks for fun but it will never be good at a high level. You need an untapped land every turn and you need to play Daze so taking 2-3 a turn is not going to help. And 4 Wasteland are key to your plan. The rest of the deck is pretty cheap and you can run with any 8 blue fetches so you're OK there. Hopefully you can get a good price on the duals or borrow them.

3. Well, you have a chance in any matchup. Fair decks are closer to 50-50 across the board than bad. Obviously some cards like Batterskull are really hard to beat, but you have the tools to disrupt that plan. You're also pretty good against the other Delver decks. Burn is probably harder to beat than Merfolk, sometimes you can tempo the fish out. Miracles is definitely workable, and yeah you shred combo. The deck is really powerful.

[Jaytron]

Hey guys,
I currently have legacy merfolk. It's a fine starter deck, but I would like to upgrade eventually because I'm not sure how good it is and it really isn't that special of a deck to me though I do enjoy it. Thinking of getting into grixis delver, after I playtested with my friend yesterday and fell in love with the deck. A couple questions:

1. How good is grixis delver for someone newish to legacy? I know a decent amount about the meta but I haven't played too much.
2. How cheap can it be built? Got the forces, the khans fetches a single wasteland, the delvers, and some other cards sometimes run (playset of true name, one vendillion clique) but I would have to buy/trade for the rest which would push my budget a bit.
3. What are it's good bad mus? This confuses me a bit as I've heard it's bad against fair decks, bad against aggro (i.e. burn, merfolk), and really only good against combo. This doesn't sound like the makeup for a tier 1 deck though I could be wrong.

Thanks!

1- As mentioned before, stifle/cabal therapy are the cards you need to "learn". The fairly complex thing about Delver is really figuring out what lines of play are best, because there will often be more than one good line, but only one optimal line. Again, this will only be fixed with practice.

2- Not cheap. You need duals, 6 of them. Volcs and Seas are the most expensive too. That being said, I think Grixis is the cheapest of the Delver variants to build.

3- Maharis summarized this perfectly. He didn't mention Lands, which is our worst matchup. It's insanely hard to win.