This past weekend was interesting, to say the least. It seems that U/W Delver is indeed king of the hill in Standard despite Cavern of Souls’ best intentions. Gerry Thompson and Team SCG Blue seem to have cracked it again, putting four of their members into the Top 8 of the SCG Standard Open in Nashville. Who would have thought that reprinting Mistbind Clique without the "Champion a Faerie" drawback would have put the blue tempo deck far ahead of the rest of the format yet again?
Now Delver has a card to fill a big hole in its gameplan, allowing it to keep mana up and still present a big threat. Geist of Saint Traft is insanely good and all, but it comes down as a sorcery, it’s legendary, and we know how to handle it with the wealth of playable Clone effects in Standard. Crafty Trafty even bites it to a Strangleroot Geist for crying out loud, and almost every green deck plays four of that guy. We don’t really know how to handle Restoration Angel yet, however. To be honest, I’m not sure that there is an efficient way to answer it while still maintaining answers to the rest of U/W Delver’s creature suite.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try! Here are a couple of alternatives for those of you whose idea of fun does not involve Snapcaster Mage targeting Vapor Snag.
Standard
1: Go over the top!
John Cuvelier showed us just two weeks ago in Orlando that Primeval Titan is still a great threat that Delver has to respect. Here’s his well-designed list, for reference:
Creatures (14)
- 4 Solemn Simulacrum
- 1 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Primeval Titan
- 1 Wurmcoil Engine
- 1 Viridian Corrupter
- 3 Huntmaster of the Fells
Lands (26)
Spells (20)
The good thing about this deck is that you can play it to 90% efficiency even if you aren’t the most experienced player, and you can always just nut draw a Delver player and crush them. This metagame interaction reminds me strongly of Valakut and Caw-Blade last summer, where you could play Valakut if you weren’t too experienced with the format and just get your opponent about 45% of the time (more if they weren’t prepared). Sure, the best players generally played with Squadron Hawk and Preordain, but the moment a skilled player picked up the green deck that player won a lot more than Caw-Blade’s proponents would like to admit.
It’s the same way with Delver and Wolf Run. Primeval Titan is absurdly powerful; it always "throws rock," so to speak, and dares its opponent to answer appropriately. With Cavern of Souls in the sideboard, it can ignore Delver’s only real way of interacting with it, and I think that it’s poised to have intermittent success over the summer SCG Open Series season.
If you do choose to play Wolf Run, play what Cuvelier played. The man clearly knows what he’s doing, and you should respect that he probably spent more time working on the deck than you, tuning the numbers and whatnot. The fact is, Glimmerpost main is reasonable in more matchups than Cavern, and you get to sideboard in Cavern when you need to beat blue decks. There’s nothing wrong with just using Glimmerpost game 1 against Delver to buy you time to get to the magic nine mana "play around Mana Leak" mark.
However, I frequently see players with Wolf Run being too cautious and unwilling to test the waters with a Primeval Titan. It’s entirely context-dependent, of course, but if you have a hand without any sweepers and you are trying to wait out your Delver opponent to stick your Titan with three-mana backup, you are only giving them enough time to put together a game plan to beat that eventuality. Obviously if you think that you are going to be able to wait, do it, but don’t be that guy who waits around attacking with a random Inkmoth Nexus and making land drops six, seven, and eight so your opponent can beat you even after you resolve Primeval Titan.
Delver, like Faeries before it, is great at making huge tempo swings in one turn, flipping the race in their favor at the last second. It’s like those cheesy action movie chase scenes where the villain is closing in on the hero, maybe chasing him through busy city streets, until that last second dodge by the more nimble hero ends up with the villain crashing brilliantly into a wall or a building (or a manure truck, if Back to the Future is more your speed). Vapor Snag, Snapcaster Mage, flash back Vapor Snag, untap, equip Sword of War and Peace to Insectile Aberration, Gut Shot your Inkmoth Nexus, attack for twelve, and you end up looking like Biff Tannen with a mouthful of cow dung!
So don’t be Biff Tannen! Learn to recognize the spots where you have to take the 50-50 shot that your opponent doesn’t have the Mana Leak and accept that you sometimes have to take that chance when you play a deck like Wolf Run. There’s even a good possibility that your opponent will burn his Mana Leaks on earlier spells rather than waiting to catch a Titan that he worries may end up being bolstered by a sandbagged Cavern of Souls. You’ll be pleasantly surprised with how often the Delver player doesn’t have it.
That said, you should hold your Cavern when you can, and don’t just run it out there if you don’t have to use it to make a land drop or play a creature that turn. This is, of course, assuming that the Delver player hasn’t Gitaxian Probed you. No point sandbagging what they know is coming!
2: Send Delver a message from Geralf!
Two Zombies players managed to fight their way through to the Top 8 in Nashville, and one of those players, Will Cruse, has been doing quite well with his list. He sadly lost his win-and-in for Top 8 at GP Minneapolis the week prior, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him win a PTQ this season with B/R Zombies. Will’s list is a great starting point for those of you who want to beat down in this format.
Creatures (21)
- 3 Phyrexian Metamorph
- 4 Diregraf Ghoul
- 4 Gravecrawler
- 4 Falkenrath Aristocrat
- 4 Geralf's Messenger
- 2 Highborn Ghoul
Lands (24)
Spells (15)
I think B/R is better than B/U simply because Falkenrath Aristocrat and burn spells do more of what you want to do than Diregraf Captain and Phantasmal Image. These red cards allow you to close out games, whereas the blue cards seem clunky and not aggressive enough. Additionally, you gain huge percentage against G/R Aggro and Naya Pod by having burn for their mana dorks and the ability to just fly over the top with Giant Solifuge 2.0.
For suggested changes, I’d highly recommend another Sword of War and Peace. Delver is going to be all about Timely Reinforcements into more defensive white cards like Celestial Purge into a Consecrated Sphinx or Batterskull. You are going to have a hard time fighting through all of that, but Sword of War and Peace blanks a lot of their defensive measures and allows you to hook up a single card and make it a threat.
To be fair, Delver may board in their Divine Offerings against you as well, but I think that having a card like War and Peace gives more than it detracts. After all, if they draw the wrong answers to your threats they lose, so diversifying cards they care about makes it more likely that they’ll draw Offering when they need Purge and vice-versa.
I do like Manabarbs, Manic Vandal, and Zealous Conscripts in the sideboard, and I can see how a matchup against Wolf Run Ramp that seems poor at first ends up slightly positive after boarding in so many powerful cards against it. Vandal is really nice considering how many artifacts are running around. You can play it against Pod, against Delver (which would never consider boarding out War and Peace against an aggressive deck without Ancient Grudge), against G/R (get their Swords!), and even against Wolf Run, where hitting a Sphere of the Suns with it might be justification for a little showboating. Get out there and shoot some Gravecrawlers out of Mortarpods!
3: FUN Pod
RUG Pod is a real deck. A real fun deck, that is! My friend Ryan Bogner went deep into Day 2 at GP Minneapolis with it, and it lets you do some very cool stuff when you draw the Pod. Even if you don’t, you’re still a passable G/R midrange deck with a cool trick in Deceiver Exarch and some sweet Phantasmal Images. David McDarby gave an interesting list in a deck tech at SCG Open Series: Nashville, but the wonderful thing about Birthing Pod is that it’s so infinitely customizable that you can add as many personal touches as you want!
Bonfire of the Damned is an obscene card against a huge percentage of the format, and you run the mana acceleration to make it not embarrassing when you draw it in your opening hand. Christian Calcano showed us firsthand how grafting Bonfire on to a Delver shell is a great way to win a Grand Prix, so it should be no surprise to see it here. Having access to four is definitely where I want to be if I’m playing a G/R deck. The one card I think I might want in this list is Wolfir Silverheart, because against any of the other Strangleroot Geist decks Silverheart gets the job done like no other creature can.
I’m also a bit surprised by the lack of Solemn Simulacrum, which seems to be right at home in a midrange Birthing Pod deck with good but not great mana fixing. Maybe if the four-drop slot weren’t so crowded with cards like Huntmaster of the Fells, he’d get more game-time. Regardless, you get more options playing this deck than you do with most other decks in the format, and to top it off, it’s harder for Delver to go over the top against you than against G/R Aggro simply because you play six-drops of your own.
Delver can’t just run out a Consecrated Sphinx under pressure to stabilize or you’ll just find a Zealous Conscripts and destroy them. You also have Phantasmal Image to appropriately answer Delver’s Sphinxes with your own. I love a deck that can choose whether it’s going to be the beatdown or the control based on its hand in a given matchup, and RUG Pod gets to have a say in scripting that piece of the game against Delver. That’s more than you can say for any other deck in the format, none of which have a good answer to a Delver deck that switches into a control role postboard.
There are certainly other defensible options in this format, including G/R Aggro, W/R Humans, any Forbidden Alchemy deck, Grand Architect, Frites, and any Stonehorn/Venser deck, but I think that G/R is becoming a poorer choice right now and I can’t shake the feeling that W/R Humans is just a Block deck trying to cut it in the big boys’ league. Play any of the three aforementioned decks (or Delver, if you can stand it), and you’ll be well prepared to crush your PTQs!
Legacy
Now let’s move on to Legacy, where you need a miracle to beat RUG Delver. I still cling to the antiquated belief that Esper Stoneblade can beat whatever you throw at it, although there is a crop of Show and Tell based combo that is squeezing honest Brainstorm players from a new angle. Well, there are two unfair decks to play and two fair decks to play if you don’t like being the bad guy.
Fair Deck Number 1: Maverick
Creatures (25)
- 4 Mother of Runes
- 1 Scryb Ranger
- 2 Aven Mindcensor
- 1 Gaddock Teeg
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 4 Knight of the Reliquary
- 3 Qasali Pridemage
- 2 Scavenging Ooze
- 3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
- 1 Ulvenwald Tracker
Planeswalkers (1)
Lands (23)
Spells (11)
Maverick, the onetime best performing deck in Legacy, seems like a declining pillar of the metagame now that people are bringing Griselbrand to Show and Tell. You may be able to beat up on Dredge’s attempts to play dirty, but there is no hate card G/W can play to beat a turn 2 Griselbrand. What you gain in exchange for this weakness, however, is a solid matchup against RUG Delver and other fair decks.
If you want to play some good, honest Legacy, there’s nothing like a Knight of the Reliquary to serve up the beats. You just might not have as much of an ability to do that now that cards like Terminus are popping up on top of libraries and cards like Griselbrand are finding their way into play prematurely. One piece of tech that I think is sorely lacking from Maverick players is Armageddon. Just try it; it is so far ahead of Choke that it’s not even funny. This is what you are praying to survive to cast against an unfair deck. If you can just play a hate bear and buy two turns with it, you can kill their lands and set them back to an untenable position.
Also, against Stoneblade or Terminus control there is no comparison between Armageddon and Choke, considering how quickly the Tundra player should be snapping a pair of Disenchants into their 60 after game 1. Armageddon is just bonkers against random decks like Enchantress or Aggro Loam as well, since all you have to do is drop a Knight of the Reliquary before you cast it to just crush your opponent. Enjoy your free wins with that card!
Fair Deck Number 2: Esper Stoneblade
Creatures (8)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (22)
Spells (27)
Ah, my old flame, Stoneblade. I haven’t played a game of Legacy since the SCG Invitational in Baltimore, but in all likelihood I’ll be reliving the glory days of early 2011 with Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic soon. The deck still has, in my opinion, the most play of any deck in the format, and with proper play it should have an acceptable matchup against any 75. I like cutting Force of Will to the sideboard and bringing in a package of three Force, three Spell Pierce, and discard spells five and six for any combo matchup.
My plan, however, may be out of date, and it may actually be time for Spell Snare to say goodbye for the time being. Spell Pierce can do the job pretty well, all things considered, and it actually hits opposing Brainstorms and combo pieces whereas Snare just sits and looks pretty. I think that while players are sticking with G/W Maverick and not running Punishing Fire, you have a passable matchup against them as long as you keep up your removal count, and I’m super happy that RUG Delver is starting to shave Sulfuric Vortex and Sulfur Elemental. You can actually use Lingering Souls defensively now, and without Sulfuric Vortex you won’t be forced into a race you can’t win.
As a side note, Spell Pierce is leagues better than Spell Snare against RUG Delver, and your Pierces are also better against the 18-land deck than their Pierces are against your 23-land deck. They are basically your Red Elemental Blasts, for lack of a better comparison, and they’re less narrow. I also heartily recommend Engineered Explosives in the deck, which Justin didn’t have in his seventh place list from Nashville. That card does everything you want it to do against Maverick and RUG. Definitely play it. Darkblast also does serious work and probably deserves a spot in the sideboard.
The last thing I’d recommend is a pair of Cabal Therapy over the Inquisitions of Kozilek. Therapy with Lingering Souls is just the bee’s knees, and the idea of getting to Intuition up a "rip your hand apart" package in addition to options for an "end the game" package, a "Wrath of God" package and a "mono-Lingering Souls" package just warms the cockles of my heart. Play Stoneblade if you prefer a more refined, skillful sort of Magic, where your Brainstorms allow you to mulligan at will and every one of your interactions with your opponents leave them further and further behind until you pull out the win. That’s my plan, at least. 🙂
Unfair Deck Number 1: Sneak and Show!
Creatures (8)
Lands (19)
Spells (33)
Man, this deck is dirty! It’s completely immune to Spell Snare and Swords to Plowshares, and you have to counter every Sneak Attack and Show and Tell! To top it off, they’ve got an extremely robust counter suite to protect themselves, and Karakas is significantly worse when your opponent draws seven cards in response. This deck, unlike the next unfair deck on our list, tries to jam more must-counter spells down Delver’s throat than the RUG deck can handle with its Force of Wills, Dazes, and Spell Pierces.
To beat this deck, not only do you need to play Thoughtseize instead of Inquisition of Kozilek (since most of their key spells cost 4, 8, and 15) but you need to beware of getting it Misdirected back at you! Vendilion Clique is super important here, and I think that it may be time for Esper Stoneblade to pick that lovely 3/1 back up. To be honest, I’m truly perplexed at how a deck can really gain an edge against this combo deck, since if RUG Delver’s countermagic isn’t quite enough it’s hard to say what exactly is "enough."
Make no mistake, if you play this deck well you will almost certainly go very deep into the tournament, although you have to learn to judge how many interactive spells RUG Delver can present at any time and play accordingly. This deck dodges most of the hate that previously worked against it, and it makes great use of Brainstorm, which is always beneficial. People are going to have to move back to point discard in addition to countermagic if they want to have a shot against Sneak and Show, and until they do, rack up your free wins!
Unfair Deck Number 2: Dredge!
Creatures (22)
Lands (14)
Spells (24)
Thanks Gerry, for blowing up my spot! Like it or not, Dredge seems to periodically go deep in Legacy Opens, especially when the pilot is skilled. One of the biggest things holding back the dumbest deck in Magic is how most people who play it don’t do so particularly well. When a good player does decide to pick up Bridge from Below, it shows. More than just knowing how to go through the motions, this deck absolutely requires its pilot to recognize what he can afford to play around and how to tempt his opponent into blowing the hate card prematurely.
If you practice Dredging (and that means against real people in sideboarded games, nothing else), asking your opponents how they decide when to blow their Crypt or cast their Surgical Extraction, then you’ll find yourself in a great spot with the deck in any tournament. If you go in with Dredge at your first Legacy event expecting to just steamroll people, however, you’re in for a wake-up call.
Against RUG Delver Dredge enjoys a favorable matchup, since RUG is usually only sideboarding in a couple of Scavenging Oozes. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can keep a do-nothing hand with the deck since RUG is still quite a fast deck that packs a hefty blue package to slow you down. If you can afford to play around Daze and Spell Pierce definitely do so, but you probably can’t so don’t worry about it. Just get those cards into the graveyard and tear their hand up!
As for specific advice, I’d default to naming Brainstorm with a blind turn 1 Cabal Therapy on the play, and once you know what your opponent is playing, things change. I’d name Tarmogoyf on the draw versus Delver if you’ve got nothing better to name, since if your opponent kept a hand without a turn 1 Delver or Nimble Mongoose he very likely has a Lhurgoyf ready to put the pressure on. On that note, I’d certainly play four Therapy, and I don’t really understand why people were trimming that card to three. It’s actually the most important anti-hate component, and it’s a super-flexible sacrifice outlet and discard outlet. The card does everything you want it to!
Good luck in Columbus for those of you attending. I’ll see you all there!
Best wishes,
Ben Friedman