“Yeah, man, he had two Wastelands and two Dazes, of course I lost.”
“Does anyone ever beat a blind-flipped Delver on turn two?”
“He drew three Nimble Mongoose. I can never beat one of those, let alone three!”
It’s okay to lose to RUG Delver. Everyone does it nowadays – it’s become almost fashionable. It’s still turning the corner from “deck” to “matchup that
people complain about,” but that doesn’t mean people are any more prepared to actually, y’know, beat it. It’s so much easier to bemoan your fate
when your opponent has Tropical Island, Delver of Secrets. Or Underground Sea, Entomb. Or Savannah, Enlightened Tutor for Survival of the Fittest.
Still, you’re not among them. You want to beat RUG Delver instead of letting Aaron Forsythe and co. do the work for you from Renton. Since no miracles
toppled the RUG regime, we’re going to have to work a little smarter if we’re going to beat The Bad Guy.
Instead of taking up space making it rain decklists, this article is about what you need to understand in order to beat RUG Delver. It’s about deck design
principles and play style principles. Knowledge is power, and duels aren’t just about having the sharpest sword. Knowing how to swing it is far more
important. So what’s the most important thing you need to know to beat RUG?
1. Play good mana.
2. Play good mana.
3. Play good mana.
4. Play good mana.
5. Play good mana.
No, really, your manabase is more than half the fight.
Nearly everyone messes this one up in one way or another. No matter how they do it, it will lose games on its own. Let’s take a look at a few decklists to
see how this can happen:
Creatures (8)
Lands (19)
Spells (34)
- 4 Brainstorm
- 4 Show and Tell
- 4 Force of Will
- 2 Intuition
- 3 Daze
- 2 Misdirection
- 4 Sneak Attack
- 4 Lotus Petal
- 4 Ponder
- 1 Spell Pierce
- 2 Flusterstorm
Sideboard
I can almost guarantee you that Dresden lost to a RUG Delver player over the course of the tournament – probably pretty late, given the concentration of
RUG decks in the top 16. So what rule did he violate?
1. Play enough colored sources.
Dresden played 19 lands and 4 Lotus Petals. The idea is that you can shoot for the stars with a Sol land (Ancient Tomb or City of Traitors, lands that
match Sol Ring’s output), a Lotus Petal, a Show and Tell, and either Sneak Attack or a boom-boom. The other idea is that you can get multiple red sources
into play in one turn, letting you Sneak Griselbrand into play, activate him once or twice, then play a Lotus Petal and Sneak Emrakul, the Aeons Torn into
play before attacking for lethal.
The problem is that this manabase is very unstable. You have six lands that don’t make blue mana, meaning you have 13 lands and four Lotus Petals to make
Ponder and Brainstorm mana. You’re playing the same number of lands as RUG Delver, meaning that you will likely have to keep the same density of one-land
hands. Both decks have around the same number of blue sources (15 in RUG, 13 in U/R Sneak, Petals notwithstanding).
This creates early game situations where the only line that U/R Sneak has available is to cast a cantrip using a Lotus Petal. If they miss on a blue
source, they’re pretty much toast. But it gets worse.
U/R Sneak is also playing 10 cards that cost three mana or more. Given that the deck has the same land density as RUG Delver, those spells are both the
most powerful and the most vulnerable in the deck.
As a result, the deck is weak to Wasteland and can be beat if the RUG player plays their Spell Pierces conservatively, which is to say that they play
around Daze and the like by not tapping mana on their main phase after they resolve a threat.
If you get Wastelanded or Stifled or Spell Pierced, your manabase isn’t going to help you get back into the game.
Playing 13 permanent blue sources in a deck that wants to resolve Show and Tell and protect it with Flusterstorm is ambitious.
I wouldn’t recommend this manabase, which is also why I wouldn’t recommend combo decks with a ton of nonbasics right now – they open themselves up to too
much interaction from RUG Delver.
A similar pitfall that people never see coming?
2. Play enough lands.
2a. No, seriously, add one right now.
There used to be a really easy way to beat the RUG Delver mirror. It involved cutting a spell for a 19th land. Back in the days where everyone
played eighteen lands, having nineteen was pretty good. Stifle and Wasteland predominated, so just having the capacity to play more lands was very good.
Don’t believe me?
Creatures (12)
Lands (18)
Spells (30)
We’ve come a long way since Indianapolis. Nineteen land is the standard nowadays, so more RUG Delver mirrors are coming down to actual decisions as opposed
to flipping a coin and seeing who draws more lands.
If you wanted to keep winning the land war, you could do something drastic like add a Life from the Loam to your sideboard. Just a thought.
If you aren’t playing RUG Delver, chances are good that you’re still not playing enough land.
“Sure,” you may say. “It’s all well and good to tell us to add a land, but how do I know what kind of land to add?” Good question.
3. Play enough basics.
A good rule of thumb in this day and age is to have enough basics of the appropriate colors to be able to cast all of your spells. If you can’t do that,
you should be playing four Wastelands and trying to punish other people for not doing that.
Here is an example of how to do it right:
Creatures (7)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (23)
Spells (27)
Four basics able to cast Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Vindicate is the bare minimum that I would want for a deck that wants to go as long as this.
If you’re playing against RUG Delver, they will draw multiple Wastelands over the course of a long game.
If you don’t have enough basics, there will be games where you never reach five or six mana.
If you don’t reach five or six mana, you will lose to Daze and Spell Pierce countering your Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Batterskull.
Don’t let that happen. Just play more basics.
To go back to Dresden’s list for a second, we can see that his list is running enough basic land – two Islands and a Mountain cast nearly everything in his
deck that’s meant to be cast. If he needs to land a Sneak Attack, he will likely already have baited out soft countermagic with Show and Tell.
As a side note – the reason why U/R Sneak Attack is better than Hive Mind right now is that you get to play more protection in Daze and sideboard counters,
your enchantment costs four mana instead of six, and your “dead” cards still interact with Show and Tell instead of either doing nothing or performing a
fractional part of winning the game once Hive Mind is in play.
Back on track, though. What else goes into playing good mana?
4. Play castable spells.
Once upon a time, people played Hymn to Tourach. It was widely considered to be the best card in the format, dominating top 8s and grinding decks down to
nothing before beating them up with a Tarmogoyf or Tombstalker.
Now, Hymn to Tourach is more or less unplayable. RUG’s mana disruption and countermagic is too good to let people consistently resolve a two-mana spell at
any point where it could matter.
The bigger problem is that you are usually trying to play this BB spell in a three-color deck. Whether your deck is B/U/G or B/G/W or B/R/W, your mana is
going to be awful.
If you look at recent B/U/G control lists, you’ll see that all of them eschew Hymn to Tourach in favor of less restrictive two-mana spells. Lorenzo Lerro’s
list, which plays three Liliana of the Veil, also plays more black sources (16) than RUG Delver plays blue sources (15).
Creatures (5)
Planeswalkers (7)
Lands (23)
Spells (26)
- 4 Brainstorm
- 2 Counterspell
- 4 Force of Will
- 2 Pernicious Deed
- 3 Innocent Blood
- 2 Ghastly Demise
- 1 Life from the Loam
- 3 Spell Snare
- 2 Thoughtseize
- 2 Inquisition of Kozilek
- 1 Go for the Throat
Sideboard
Creatures (2)
Planeswalkers (5)
Lands (23)
Spells (30)
Nick Spagnolo list has a bit more trouble casting its BB spells, playing only 13 untapped black sources. It only plays 2 Liliana of the Veil, but Nick
made a clear decision to not slot those as consistent three-drops by playing more colorless lands and fewer black sources.
Neither list, however, plays Hymn to Tourach, opting instead for cheaper and easier options in Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek. While I would like
to see more basics in each list, any non-Jace spell with two colored mana symbols in its casting cost is a tough fit.
If I were to change a card in either of the above lists, I would try to get two Swamps into the manabase. Being able to cast your spells is wildly
underrated.
One thing that is laudable about both of these decks, however, is that they don’t break the next rule on the list of “how to play good mana”:
5. Lower your curve.
Look at the following two decks and think about which one is better set up to beat RUG Delver.
Creatures (5)
Planeswalkers (7)
Lands (23)
Spells (26)
- 4 Brainstorm
- 2 Counterspell
- 4 Force of Will
- 2 Pernicious Deed
- 3 Innocent Blood
- 2 Ghastly Demise
- 1 Life from the Loam
- 3 Spell Snare
- 2 Thoughtseize
- 2 Inquisition of Kozilek
- 1 Go for the Throat
Sideboard
Creatures (8)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (22)
Spells (27)
It’s not really that close. Lerro’s deck has more one-mana plays, more removal, the same amount of discard, and more black sources to cast all of his early
plays on time.
He also has fewer threes. All of his threes kill at least one creature.
His sideboard has four Tarmogoyfs, a card that can close out a RUG deck that can’t keep a Delver of Secrets in play.
No sane RUG player is going to side in Submerge against a Pernicious Deed/Liliana of the Veil/Jace, the Mind Sculptor deck, so the sideboarded Tarmogoyfs
will stay in play or eat two burn spells. Either way, good deal.
By lowering his curve to focus on the one- and two-drop slots, Lerro is ensuring that he’ll be able to reach his end game of activating Jace and Liliana.
Control decks almost never lose long games against RUG Delver. Their biggest problem is getting beaten in the early game. By playing more spells to
interact on turns one, two, and three, B/U/G decks can have a much better matchup against RUG.
Sometimes, though, it’s not about the mana. Your mana is perfect, you play enough lands, and your curve is low enough. So what’s going wrong?
6. Your rate isn’t good enough.
Despite having nothing resembling an actual Divination in their deck, RUG Delver can grind people out better than almost any other deck. Why?
It’s the best Brainstorm deck in Legacy.
What does that mean? It’s very simple. If the point of Brainstorm is to cast Ancestral Recall – that is, draw three live cards – then RUG Delver can do
that more and earlier than any other deck in the format. Why?
Because it doesn’t need its third land.
The beauty of the deck is that it operates perfectly on a Tropical Island and a Volcanic Island. If it has two spare lands in hand and can cast Daze for
value, they can execute the following sequence:
1. Daze back either dual land and counter a spell.
2. Cast Brainstorm using the other land, putting back the returned dual land and one spare land.
3. Play the other “spare” land, which is a fetchland.
4. Activate it for the color that you’re missing.
Even in the midgame, RUG Delver can operate with only two lands in play and never play a third. This makes its Brainstorms more powerful than any other
deck’s.
The reason it can afford to do this is that the rate on all of its cards is very good.
What does “rate” mean? Think of it this way: I’m playing a deck with twenty zero-mana 3/3s, twenty zero-mana counterspells, and twenty zero-mana
Vindicates. I can only play one spell on the first turn and two spells on each turn past that.
Obviously this deck doesn’t exist. The point is to show how important mana cost is and how important it is to have to play lands.
Since RUG Delver only plays 19 land and has 8-10 cantrips to make sure it stays at exactly two lands in play, it can always have four or five cards in
hand. Sometimes they’re all land. Sometimes they’re four counterspells. You don’t know which one is the case, but you have to put a read on them at some
point.
The way that you lose to RUG Delver when you get “out-rated” is that you end the game with five lands to their two, both with no hand, except they have two
creatures in play to your none and you’re getting Lightning Bolted. At no point did they “get ahead” on cards – they were always ahead on cards, it just
took a while before the differences solidified. You were ahead on land, they were ahead on spells. Nice deck.
So how do you fix this one? Sadly, there’s some bad news here: RUG Delver makes some decks unplayable. If your deck can’t beat their rate, it’s unlikely to
be very good.
If you want to catch up on your inferior rate, you’ll need something like Veteran Explorer to jump you ahead to the point where you can cast spells as
well. If you don’t have that boost, you’ll need to find something like Chalice of the Void to lock out the lower parts of the mana curve in order to
compete.
But let’s say that’s not the case. You have a well-constructed manabase with enough basics, enough lands, a reasonable spell base with enough cheap spells
to survive the early turns, and your overall game plan won’t get trumped by RUG’s fundamentally cheaper spells. What gives? Why are you still losing?
7. Figure out what metric you’re going to beat them on, then be able to actually win.
Want to play more removal spells than they have creatures? That’s fine, but make sure you have enough Edicts to never lose to a Nimble Mongoose.
Want to play more land destruction than they have lands? An admirable and classy way to win, indeed, but make sure you have enough ways to not lose to
their turn one and turn two creatures as well.
Want to trump them with bigger green creatures? Great decision – just make sure that you aren’t going to lose to a Submerge.
Want to sidestep their gameplan entirely and burn their face off? An honorable choice, but make sure you don’t have to play into their Dazes and Spell
Pierces.
Want to combo them out? Make sure you can beat a slew of Force Spikes and assorted other countermagic.
Want to lock them out? Make sure you can beat their one-drop, whether it comes down on turn one or turn fifteen. Chalice of the Void and Smokestack are
good cards, but you still need to resolve them and not lose to their Insectile Aberration.
Want to play some cards, attack, block, and see what happens? I think I found your problem…
Remember, they’re the ones with more cantrips and fewer lands. If they need to find a certain card, they will. What they won’t always have are multiples of
that card. If your game plan taxes one resource and ignores another, you’ll have a good shot of winning. If your plan leaves you open to interaction from
all of their resources, you will almost certainly lose. Keep this in mind as you select your deck this weekend.
Speaking of this weekend, I’ll be commentating for the StarCityGames.com Open Weekend in Orlando along with the inestimable Jacob Van Lunen. If you’re not
in Minneapolis or Orlando, tune in to SCGLive! I can’t wait to see what Florida has cooked up. They have pretty clear targets – Copperline Gorge in
Standard and Misty Rainforest in Legacy – so there should be some innovative decks to check out. I look forward to bringing them to you!
@drewlevin
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