Deck

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

Bonus Round Against Cedric

Grixis Delver

Drew Levin

Test deck on 08-18-2013

Legacy

Creatures (15)

• 3 Grim Lavamancer
• 4 Dark Confidant
• 4 Delver of Secrets
• 4 Young Pyromancer

Lands (17)

• 3 Wasteland
• 3 Volcanic Island
• 3 Underground Sea
• 4 Flooded Strand
• 4 Bloodstained Mire

Spells (28)

• 4 Brainstorm
• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 3 Force of Will
• 4 Daze
• 3 Stifle
• 4 Ponder
• 4 Gitaxian Probe
• 2 Dismember

Sideboard

• 2 Umezawa's Jitte
• 2 Perish
• 1 Grim Lavamancer
• 4 Cabal Therapy
• 1 Pyroblast
• 2 Smash to Smithereens
• 3 Flusterstorm

I was unimpressed by both Perish and Umezawa’s Jitte. Perish performed well in the SCG Legacy Open in New Jersey, but finding a way to get any sort of value out of it is a challenge against decks with Spell Pierce and Liliana of the Veil. It costs a lot and is very situational, both of which are major downsides in such a proactive deck.

Umezawa’s Jitte has a similar sob story—it costs too much, and you want it against decks that try to beat you by killing all of your creatures. Since all of the deck’s creatures are so fragile, there are frequently points where Jitte is in play but has nothing to do. If the best-case scenario comes to pass (Young Pyromancer is alive and churning out Elementals), Jitte is a great way to close the game out. In all of the worst-case scenarios, however, it does nothing.

This deck struggled a lot against removal-heavy configurations, and it has an undeniable problem with the fragility of its entire creature base. Moving forward, I recommend cutting the Perishes and the Jittes for a more proactive game plan: one Badlands and three Tombstalkers.

The Badlands is necessary for the deck to be able to cast Tombstalker off of two lands while still maintaining the ability to cast its removal. The addition of the fifteenth colored land will also allow the deck to have more resilience in tempo matchups, where getting mana screwed by Stifle and Wasteland is a real concern.

Tombstalker provides this deck with an angle of attack that doesn’t get answered by any card that other decks are sideboarding in. People could lean on Golgari Charm, Abrupt Decay, Rough // Tumble, Pyroclasm, Engineered Plague, or Punishing Fire to beat this deck, but none of them kill a Tombstalker. That’s a big deal, and it’s worth trying out against RUG Delver, Jund, Goblins, and Shardless BUG.

Join me next week, when I’ll be writing a follow up article on the best combo deck in Legacy: Omni-Tell!

Until next week,

Drew Levin

@drewlevin on Twitter