MTG Salvation

I'm curious what everyone's thoughts are on this sideboard plan I've been running:



This was my thought process for the board: our weakest matchups are Tron variants, Bant Eldrazi, Dredge, and Abzan (because of Lingering Souls). We are good to great against almost every other deck in the field, so I wanted the sideboard to mostly help those 4 matchups while having some versatility elsewhere.

Blood Moon feels like the best way to address the Tron and Eldrazi matchups at the same time. While running land destruction plus Surgical is good against Tron, it's not particularly effective against Bant Eldrazi or Eldrazi Tron. Blood Moon gives you game in all 3 of those matchups. Ceremonious Rejection also pulls a ton of weight against all of those strategies, while also having some nice use against Affinity and Lantern.

Surgical is super versatile and can come in for alot of matchups. It's obviously excellent against Dredge, but it's also one of our best answers to Lingering Souls. Staticaster fills a similar role in that it shines in both of those matchups.

Damnation, Painful Truths, and Go for the Throat gives us some additional percentage points against midrange and Bant Eldrazi. Brutality is a swiss army knife and can be brought in for a bunch of general matchups.

The only one I'm still on the fence about is Thoughtseize; it might be better off as a second Staticaster

I feel like it's a mistake to not have Thoughtsieze mainboard anyway. What are you running in it's place? No Lilianas?

Quote from CreativeTheo »

I feel like it's a mistake to not have Thoughtsieze mainboard anyway. What are you running in it's place? No Lilianas?

I'm not running a Shadow variant, so no Thoughtseize main. Also not running Lilianas of either variety

@PurpleIntet
Moons are great. Surgical is good, I'm less hot on it w/o fuminators but seems reasonable (though IDK id bring in more than 1 vs abzan). Thoughtseize is good in a wide variety of MU's, I would recommend going up to 2 (breach titan, lantern, random combo lists). That also works much better w/surgical. Brutality is good. Truths is a little sketchy, I've always been skeptical of the life loss and run 2 AV instead, but that one comes more to personal preference. Dispel seems unwarranted without alot of control in your area. Squalls are good. Throat should be murderous cut, fatal push, or terminate. Damnation is good vs drazi/midrange, just a little surprised cause I've always found that MU favorable. Would also recommend a hurkyl's for affinity and random artifact lists. Staticaster is great, but no more than 1 unless you're swamped with x/1s. Rejection I have no experience with but off the cuff it seems solid. Also (to nobody in particular), veil lili is bad in grixis, last hope is passable in the SB. The grixis walker of choice should be ashiok.

Also, @luciferz, that MU is pretty even. Blood moon is good, removal is good, mass GY hate is good (surgical is meh unless you see last hope). If they get too aggressive with their shadows (in order to outclass tasi/angler for example), bolt-snap-bolt is a very good line of play. YP is also exceptional here as you can chump all day long (last hope and random bloodrush tramplers are annoying though). Yes, snare is meh here.

My bad. Didn't pay attention to which version I was looking at lol. In which case I would say it looks good, I'd still find a way for a copy of Liliana, she's great against Azban and grindy decks. Also agree that Terminate would be better than Go for the throat.

Yeah! I was waiting for someone to take the Shadow approach into Delver. I'm not completely sure about maindeck Thoughtseize, but Stubborn Denial seems good along the fatties. My only issue is that Delver doesn't turn it on, did that bring you issues?.

Also, your Sideboard seems tailored for this meta. Did Blood Moon showed up or it was medium?. I would exchange Push for a Dreadbore no matter how bad sorcery speed is, it kills big dumb stuff and PW's.

Before there was discussion about putting in two copies of Death Shadow in a standard Delver list and letting your shocks and Thoughtsiezes do all of the work. It might be viable in that list.

Pulled off a nice 4-0 last night against a few tough matchups; beat Mono U Tron, Merfolk, Mono Green Stompy, and Bant Eldrazi. This was my list:


The mana base is a little less than perfect because I'm missing a couple of fetchlands, but I do feel like 8 fetches and 20 lands total is good. The maindeck Censor was a test this week. I wasn't hugely impressed by it, I think I'm going to either run a Deprive or a Cut // Ribbons in its place moving forward. Also considering dropping the Painful Truths for a second Thoughtseize in the board. I've been loving the 3-3-3-3 split of removal/counters (excluding Bolt) in the main deck; the third Terminiate in particular really helps diversify your removal suite.

I was playing against a friend today who was on abzan combo. I couldn't beat it to save my life. Is this a bad matchup? Or am I just not playing against it correctly? The guy had so much value, toolbox, and recursion. Counter a collected company? Gets it back with a eternal witness. Needs a combo piece? Finds one wit chord. Counter yhe chord? Persist creatures really stretches the kill spells.

We weren't playing with SB. I have graveyard hate and EE in my SB. is abzan super hard to beat prebaord?

Quote from Jonny_Tempel »

The former Abzan Company deck has been an easy MU, at least in my experience. The new Druid Combo feels faster, more consistent and better at grinding so that MU definitely got worse.

If the deck gets popular at your LGS, Anger of the Gods is a very potent sideboard option while beeing strong against other small creatures decks and Dredge too.

What's the secret? Shoot his dorks to slow him down? E-witness is a key card for him. Chords, and Coco are key as well. That decks just seems super resilient.

Agrees about Anger of the Gods or Pyroclasm type cards against abzhan company. Surgical extraction is helpful too. I have played grixis delver for a few years and was concerned when gitprobe got banned. But have discovered fatal push is worth it with some number of spell snare and discard, especially with the surgical extraction. I've def beat all the popular type decks at least once. The only decks that gave me problems were Lantern Control and Amulet Bloom. Young Peezy to the SB, run 4 Snapcasters, 4 Delver, 2 Tasigur, 2 Anglers now 12 creature count also thoughts on going to 20 lands to add a fetch to help with the fatal push? Also Agony Warp garbage or what?

Quote from Darksteel_Eye »

Agrees about Anger of the Gods or Pyroclasm type cards against abzhan company. Surgical extraction is helpful too. I have played grixis delver for a few years and was concerned when gitprobe got banned. But have discovered fatal push is worth it with some number of spell snare and discard, especially with the surgical extraction. I've def beat all the popular type decks at least once. The only decks that gave me problems were Lantern Control and Amulet Bloom. Young Peezy to the SB, run 4 Snapcasters, 4 Delver, 2 Tasigur, 2 Anglers now 12 creature count also thoughts on going to 20 lands to add a fetch to help with the fatal push? Also Agony Warp garbage or what?

Personally I want my two-mana kill spell to be as universal as possible; most of the time Agony Warp is just going to be an overcosted Bolt that can only hit creatures. No need to play it when we have Bolt, Push, and Terminate available. Also, I feel pretty strongly that 20 lands is where you want to be

If a bigger creature attacks you can respond with agony warp and block with an angler and angler will possibly not die. Also, it is black blue which are the main colors of this deck not saying red isn't important so they would be like alternate bolt out of the sideboard for specific scenarios. Just saying agony warp might be worth 1 in the side board

Does anyone else think we need 2 steam vents and 2 watery graves? I'll give you guys a scenario that lost me a game, my opener was tarn and vents for lands, i play vents into thoughtscour and mill my only watery grave, then t2 i crack tarn and am forced to pull crypt for black and because i was not able to play a delver + cantrip.. it took an extra turn to flip and it was too late .. if i had a 2nd grave i would have won

Quote from sunnyboys2 »

Does anyone else think we need 2 steam vents and 2 watery graves? I'll give you guys a scenario that lost me a game, my opener was tarn and vents for lands, i play vents into thoughtscour and mill my only watery grave, then t2 i crack tarn and am forced to pull crypt for black and because i was not able to play a delver + cantrip.. it took an extra turn to flip and it was too late .. if i had a 2nd grave i would have won

Oh yea, this has happened to me before. But I don't play death's shadow so 1 of my UB lands is still darkslick shores to complement watery grave. And the basic swamp is still there in case of ghost quarters/blood moons of course.

What's everyone's opinion on 'Bone Picker'. The card looks like it may be good as a 2 of.

Quote from Loaf1255555 »

What's everyone's opinion on 'Bone Picker'. The card looks like it may be good as a 2 of.

I would say it is the opposite of a delver of secrets, bad early game draw, due to the conditional casting cost, but better late game because of deathtouch allowing it to trade with larger late game creatures. Problem is, what do you sub out for it? Would not recommend subbing out delvers, as that is your early aggression, and it is not better than a tasigur, the golden fang. Maybe sideboard, for when you play matches where delver is bad and you are facing down some big creatures, although I'm not sure which match-up that would be.

Here is my current delver decklist (and yes I too love stubborn denial):

Hey guys, I ended up going 10-5 with Grixis Delver at SCG Baltimore for a 49th place finish. Sadly I lost the last 2 rounds to put me out of top 8 or top 32 contention. I plan on writing a tournament report going over the deck and match-ups. I never got around to writing one after winning SCG regionals, but I'll really try this time. Anyway here's the decklist I played.

Congrats! Pretty good results.

Would this build benefit from discard in the form of inquisition of kozilek and thoughtseize?