Noticing that most of the best blue creatures are Humans, I was surprised a U/W deck featuring Champion of the Parish and Snapcaster Mage had never found popularity. It’s difficult to find room for enough Humans to make Champion of the Parish good and enough spells to make Delver of Secrets good in the same deck, but that was my goal as I took a new look at Standard in the week leading up to GP Orlando.
After Worlds, I’d been ignoring Standard. My time spent working on real Magic formats was devoted to drafting Innistrad to prepare for GP Austin. After that Grand Prix ended, I found myself with very little time to get caught up on Standard.
Looking at Gindy’s winning deck from SCG Open: Atlanta, I liked the idea of playing Ancient Grudge and/or Nihil Spellbomb. I built a Tezzeret deck splashing for Ancient Grudge (Sphere of the Suns helps, and the fact that most cards in the deck are colorless means playing Shimmering Grotto is easy), and I tried building a Spider Spawning deck. Building decks that lost to the exact cards I wanted to try to play more of seemed a little counterproductive though—what if other people had similar thoughts?
Neither of those decks looked great anyway, so I tried building a deck with all the cards I thought were best in the format: Doomed Traveler, Snapcaster Mage, Moorland Haunt were the most important, but Delver of Secrets, Champion of the Parish, and Midnight Haunting all seemed great too.
I liked the way early versions of the deck played well enough, but I decided I was definitely playing the deck at the GP when I added Mortarpod and saw the interaction between that and Doomed Traveler.
I played the deck on my stream, and viewers suggested that 23 land was too many and that Vapor Snag was better than Gut Shot at the moment. Both of those suggestions were great and improved the deck significantly. Also, Gaudenis told me that, in his testing, he’d loved Ratchet Bomb and that I should try it in any deck I played right now, and he was way more right than I would have guessed; that card was stellar for me all weekend.
The deck I ended up playing was very straightforward:
Creatures (18)
Lands (21)
Spells (21)
The theory behind the deck is that Champion of the Parish and Delver of Secrets are both so good in their decks that they can be good enough even if you have fewer of them, and then you have a higher chance to play a “Wild Nacatl” on turn one. Alternatively, it’s just a regular Delver deck with a better Phantasmal Bear.
But Doomed Traveler doesn’t get enough respect—getting to play him was also a big deal. Preparing for Worlds, I felt like it was one of the best cards in the format, and it was surprisingly nightmarish for some decks to deal with. Recently, people have tried to play more sacrifice effects to combat Invisible Stalker, Geist of Saint Traft, and Thrun, the Last Troll, and that makes Doomed Traveler even better, especially when I have Geist of Saint Traft of my own to protect.
The deck has been criticized as being a Delver deck with worse mana, but, given that Delver decks often sideboard white cards that they plan to cast, I actually think this is a Delver deck with better mana. I have 13 sources of each color, with Gitaxian Probe, so it plays like slightly more, and Ponder to help fix if I need it. I can usually cast all my spells, and I’ve carefully avoided anything that costs two white or two blue (except Snapcaster sometimes, but he still works off a single blue). Delver can cast its blue spells all the time, but it often can’t cast white spells in its hand. My odds of being able to cast everything are much higher than theirs at a cost of an occasional need to mulligan, but basically, the mana works well.
By keeping my threat count relatively high and by playing creatures that have a lot of power or resilience for their cost, I’m able to apply enough pressure with creatures that don’t need equipment in order to win in a reasonably timely fashion. This lets me cut equipment that’s vulnerable to artifact removal to avoid losing to people who were prepared for Invisible Stalker decks.
Sixteen Humans is a relatively small number for Champion of the Parish, but, counting Snapcaster Mage, I have twelve cantrips, which makes it feel more like 20 Humans (60-12 “cyclers” = “48-card deck,” 16/48*60=20); given that I’m happy with him if he’s 2/2, and he’s insane at 3/3 or bigger, he’s quite good, especially since it’s not all that rare that he randomly gets up to 5/5.
Also, while my Human count is low, none of them cost three or more, so if the Champion is going to grow, he’ll do it right away. It’s questionable to count Hero of Bladehold as a Human for Champion of the Parish, since the benefit won’t come for so long. Since I have 12 one-mana Humans, I’m actually more likely to attack for three on turn two than most Human decks (and that’s not even counting the games where I attack for three because I had a turn-one Delver of Secrets).
Speaking of Delver of Secrets, while slightly below some Delver decks, 19 hits is certainly enough to make Delver respectable. At this point I think the card’s successes speak for themselves; the question is just how low you can go before he becomes worse than something like Phantasmal Bear (which would be much worse in this deck because it’s not a Human, of course), and whatever the answer is, I’m pretty sure it’s well below 19.
The other card I get to utilize well that puts this build above other Delver decks is Mortarpod. Mortarpod is fantastic against Delver, Tempered Steel, Mono Red, and several other decks, but a lot of decks can’t take full advantage of it. Thanks to Doomed Traveler, Midnight Haunting, Moorland Haunt, and Timely Reinforcements out of the sideboard, I have a lot of fuel for it, and I’m likely to end up in situations where my opponent and I each have 1/1 fliers, and just giving +0/+1 can be pretty big there. Also, since I’m usually killing my opponent with several small creatures, it’s generally good for 2-6 damage at the end of the game, and the little extra reach can go a long way, which means the card isn’t that bad even against control decks where it’s relatively weak.
Based on the strength of the main deck, I think this is a great deck. It puts people on a similar clock to other Delver decks while having a similar amount of disruption, but it’s not vulnerable to the same things, which is a huge upgrade when you’re similar to the deck to beat. People overloaded on cards that are bad against me like artifact removal and sacrifice effects to try to beat “me,” and it only makes them even worse.
However, what really puts this deck over the top for me is the sideboard.
This deck does what I learned to love with Faeries: it’s a straightforward aggro-control deck game one that creates the fastest clock it can and protects it in generic, broadly applicable ways, and then game two it can easily be tuned to take a more controlling role to beat whatever my opponent is doing.
Champion of the Parish, while excellent at Plan A, my maindeck plan, is the most frequent card I side out by far. Partially this is because I can’t really cut any other Humans and not cut him because cutting them makes him so much worse, but mostly it’s because I’m just not trying to do what he’s doing in a lot of game twos, and I think my opponents will be a lot more ready for him.
Consider my plan against other Delver decks:
For the most part, they’re going to have equipment, and they’re going to try to kill me either with Delver of Secrets, Geist of Saint Traft, or Equipment. I side in 2 Divine Offering, 1 Revoke Existence, 2 Ratchet Bomb, 2 Gut Shot, 1 Phantasmal Image, 2 Timely Reinforcements, and maybe a Negate or two. This allows me to stop all of their paths to victory and generally gain value on the exchange.
If they play Delver and I Gut Shot it, I’m up one mana; if I Divine Offering a Sword of War and Peace or a Runechanter’s Pike, I’m up 0-3 mana and 2-3 life. If I Phantasmal Image their Geist of Saint Traft, I’m up one mana, and if I answer it with Timely Reinforcements, I’m generally up essentially a 1/1 and two life. Ratchet Bomb is usually roughly a two-for-one, but I did get as many as five for one at the Grand Prix when someone played into it and three for one much more realistically that turned a great start for my red opponent into a game he couldn’t possibly win.
By siding out Champion of the Parish, Mana Leak, and Vapor Snag, I cut my cards that can’t consistently trade with one or more of my opponent’s cards. All my answers are cheap enough that they can’t out tempo me, and while I can profitably answer their threats, they can’t profitably answer mine. They don’t have good answers to Doomed Traveler or Midnight Haunting. We both bring in enough removal to stop someone from winning early with a Delver of Secrets, and because Mana Leak doesn’t really work, neither of us can play a threat and protect it. Understanding that the game will go long because of this, I was able to prepare in advance, while many of my opponents were still trying to race, and their dead cards like Mana Leak and Vapor Snag just played into my plan of winning based on card advantage (usually in the form of 1/1 fliers).
Against something like a Mono Red deck, the plan is very similar, except that I cut Delver of Secrets, which they can always easily burn out, and leave in some Vapor Snags to make sure I don’t lose to an early Stromkirk Noble or Stormblood Berserker.
Playing a deck that only needs 21 land and has a curve as low as this deck as a control deck is amazing. It’s easy to win at all stages of the game. The opponent can’t come out ahead of you because your spells are as cheap or cheaper, and you know you have inevitability because of all the card advantage built into your deck (when you know your opponent has to trade one-for-one with your small creatures rather than just ignoring them), so it really never feels like you can lose.
Against control, you’re in a very traditional aggro-control against control matchup. You want to establish an early clock and protect it until they’re dead, developing your board at the end of their turn when they don’t force you to counter something. For the most part, you don’t care about them drawing cards because you’re trying to kill them before they can cast all their spells anyway. The only real danger is them resolving Curse of Death’s Hold or Elesh Norn, but you should usually be able to prevent that pretty easily with Mana Leak, Negate, and killing them too quickly.
Ramp is similar but harder. Their removal is better (red removal is cheaper than white and black removal because all of your creatures have such a low toughness), and Thrun can be very annoying to attack into (fortunately you have enough fliers that he doesn’t completely shut you down). Their finishers are slightly worse against you than Curse of Death’s Hold and Elesh Norn, but it’s not like you can really beat a resolved Titan most of the time either; also, they can realistically just ramp out of range of Mana Leak. That said, your control matchup is awesome, so the ramp matchup is still pretty close; however, if I was expecting a lot of it, I’d probably want more of something like Flashfreeze, and I’m not sure what exactly I’d want for Conley’s deck.
The worst matchup is probably Humans. Unlike Delver, they can just ignore your threats and go over the top, and if you sideboard the way you do against Delver, they’d just play Hero of Bladehold and kill you every game. Luckily, I managed to never get paired against Humans at the GP, but I did lose to the one Honor of the Pure deck I played against (U/W Tokens). You can’t exactly treat them as a ramp deck because you don’t have the board advantage early. Your Champion of the Parish is bad because theirs is so much better. You should have more fliers than them, and Vapor Snag is actually good against them, where it’s bad in the mirror and not really the answer you want against Titans. Ratchet Bomb does something, but really, it’s going to be pretty hard to win unless you can flip an early Delver to establish a clock while you tempo out their threats. Fortunately, you might be a favorite in games where you have Delver.
I think this was a great deck for Orlando, and I’d happily play it again. The only change I’d make is to cut the Runechanter’s Pike from the sideboard for either Geist of Saint Traft, Phantasmal Image, or Ratchet Bomb. I think it’s a good choice for this weekend, particularly if you can find a way to consistently beat Conley’s deck (a matchup I’m not sure about because I’ve never played it).
Grand Prix Orlando was an exciting tournament and trip for me with a lot of ups and downs. I started out by missing my flight due to snow and the door to my gas tank freezing shut—a problem I’d never heard of before, and I got into Orlando at 11 am the morning of the tournament and proceeded to lose my first two rounds before winning out until the last round, when I narrowly lost a fantastic match for Top 8. After the tournament, I stayed in Orlando to go to Universal Studios and Disney World (I recommend Universal over Disney World if you’re not with a young child), and now I’m writing this from a hotel, rather than from my house, because we decided to run back the missed flight on the way back, thanks to some misinformation.
I could tell you some details about some of the rounds—there were a few interesting plays, like whether to Ponder for a 4th land to play Midnight Haunting, or just play Midnight Haunting and hold the Ponder (I played the Ponder, which was wrong, and missed the land) and whether to counter or Vapor Snag an Inferno Titan that only would have killed a 1/1 Spirit when I had perfect information (still not sure which was right), but really, I’m not sure anyone wants to read detailed descriptions of each round. I know I personally almost never read that stuff these days.
The important lessons of this article are that you should consider playing this deck if you’re playing in SCG Open: DC this weekend, and you should look for matchups where you can maximize an advantage you have over a similar deck by sideboarding to focus on a role that exploits that advantage every game. Outside of PT Philadelphia, this is the happiest I’ve been with a deck since playing Faeries, and I’ve played several excellent decks in that time. Check it out!
Thanks for reading,
@samuelhblack on twitter