Oh come on. When someone taps out to cast a fragile threat that's powerful when unanswered and it gets killed, its not the threat's fault.
At the very least tell me you inquisition T1 to check if the coast is clear before you tap out and put peezy on the board. Starting with "T2: young pyro-" is just a display of poor play, not a poor card.
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1) Pyromancer: YES. It is our wincon, a nightmare for all midrange decks.
You: T2 Pyro
Them: T3 Liliana, and you wish you'd kept up Mana Leak
You: T2 Pyro
Them: Bolt, you're missing your countermagic again
You: T5 Pyro with countermagic held up
You: Huh, I wish I had something that could swing for 5 next turn and actually close out this game before they topdeck their out
I'd rather splash white for Lingering Souls than ever put Young Pyro in a Modern deck again. We already have good matchups against midrange when we hold up counterspells because without Pyros, and boarding out Delver, most of their removal is stone dead against us and they can't do anything about Mana Leak and Spell Pierce.
Just because you never learned how to actually correctly play Young Pyromancer doesn't mean that it's a bad card. For starters, he was often a T3 play as MrM0nd4y describes.
There is a good reason why Kevin Jones did not recommend new players try Grixis Delver, and it was due to the steep learning curve.
Young Pyromancer was never for fighting just against midrange, but also against 1 for 1 removal from Control decks, and for Combo decks to push an ever increasing clock. As someone who also plays Grixis Delver in Legacy, Young Pyro is by far one of the best draws I can hope for vs combo and control decks.
In other news, I've decided upon a singleton Fatal Push (in addition to my normal amount of terminates, which is 4). It's a meta call, but I really don't think that it's nearly as sexy as people have been describing it. Please don't remove Terminates from your deck, you will regret it.
Young Pyromancer has single-handedly won me more games than any other single win condition in the deck. I love it so much so, I have greatly considered cutting a Delve creature for a fourth. Yes, he is fragile, but he also literally wins games on his own and/or saves you from games you have no business winning.
Yeah lol, although it think it's fair to wonder if Peezy is still a worthwhile include for the deck, it has to be a serious discussion about his playability. The reddit modern forum was hating him the other day and some of the things they were saying got a bit ridiculous.
Peezer gives us another early play against decks where we need a clock, like tron and scapeshift. Yeah, a turn 2 peezer on the draw can be clunky/risky against tron, but as tron is the deck where a turn 2 snapcaster is often correct, a 2/1 that adds an extra point of power to the board every time you sneeze is still a very good clock.
And against midrange and control he's excellent as a 2 for 1 at least. A 1/1 doesn't seem like much, but a free 1/1 is a very cool thing. Peezy usually acts as like a mini pia and kiran in these matchups; card advantage is card advantage. And this isn't even getting into how he's our best answer to lili period.
So yeah, it's okay to talk about the downsides of peezer, but lets stick with his actual downsides (he's clunky in multiples, not great against hyperfast aggro, a bad topdeck).
Also, on the topic of fatal push. I used to run 2 terminates, 1 murderous cut, and 1 flex slot that sometimes became an extra terminate or a dreadbore. Now I'm running 2 terminates and 2 pushes. I do think fatal push is very sexy, as I've always loved running extra "bolts" but could only do it in certain metagames, but now push gives generic enough "bolts" to always be around. But 2 terminates is my absolute minimum, as opposing tasigurs and spaghetti monsters are very scary.
Yeah lol, although it think it's fair to wonder if Peezy is still a worthwhile include for the deck, it has to be a serious discussion about his playability. The reddit modern forum was hating him the other day and some of the things they were saying got a bit ridiculous.
Agreed that it's fair to consider cutting or modifying his number, but at least stick with legit arguments.
Also, I wouldn't really put too much trust in Reddit's opinion of anything. Let the facts speak for themselves: virtually every single well-placed Grixis Delver list (Excepting Overturf) in the past couple months has been lists with Young Pyromancer. Maybe a YP-less version now might be good, but since my initial posts thinking of going for a more Overturf build, I've changed my mind and still plan on keeping 2 in my list.
Yeah lol, although it think it's fair to wonder if Peezy is still a worthwhile include for the deck, it has to be a serious discussion about his playability. The reddit modern forum was hating him the other day and some of the things they were saying got a bit ridiculous.
Agreed that it's fair to consider cutting or modifying his number, but at least stick with legit arguments.
Also, I wouldn't really put too much trust in Reddit's opinion of anything. Let the facts speak for themselves: virtually every single well-placed Grixis Delver list (Excepting Overturf) in the past couple months has been lists with Young Pyromancer. Maybe a YP-less version now might be good, but since my initial posts thinking of going for a more Overturf build, I've changed my mind and still plan on keeping 2 in my list.
That YP is bad when played on curve is a legitimate argument against it. This and the consideration that it's a bad top-deck should give anyone pause.
The argument that it's good with counter-magic backup is specious at best. What isn't?
It isn't necessarily a bad top deck and can in fact be good. If the game is stalled out and I draw into one, play it, and my opponent has no removal then I am up a threat. Next turn, there is a fair chance that I can chain some card draw effects to get more value out of him.
Besides, it gives an optional way of winning the game. We rely on Delver or Delve creatures often, this lets us go wide. That can be tough to deal with.
- How many threats and how often and early in the game you want to be drawing them
- If you're ok playing a passive early-game more often than not, 12-13 threats usually does the trick. So you don't have much room for threat diversification, since you're probably running 4delver, 4-5 delve fatties, 4snappies, maybe add 1 clique or something else with utility.
- If you prefer playing a Aggro-control game since the beggining, or you perceive that a pro-active role is best for your own metagame, you wanna make sure you can draw those early threats. In order to do that, you have to diversificate beucause you can only play so many delve mechanic spells. 14-15 threats seem to be the magic number for me, and it avoids having to mulligan often to find threats.
I think Pyromancer is at his best when he fills this role in our deck. You want to be turning your creatures sideways early, and you wanna make sure they can effectively take down your opponent or at least bring him to burn range. This is the main reason I consider before sleeving my young peezys.
I'll stick to this line of thought. It really comes down to threat density and playstyle of choice.
Thanks! It took me years to get the playset, but i finally did. I'm glad I got them sogned before he passed away.
Overturf has a very good understanding of the format, but makes really odd choices to combat it. I'm not sure that BM is going to do it in this meta.
His SB choices for Grixis delver are odd to me too. Like I can see the value in adding Cavern to resolve snapcasters, but it seems negligible to me and I don't think it makes a significant difference. In a vacuum a card like Painful Truths seems more powerful against blue mirrors.
I also don't think Fulminator does the job here either. I completely understand the versatility over Molten Rain and Crumble, but I don't believe that it's worth the inconsistency it adds to your delver flips. I think that matchups like Nahiri Control and Jund are completely fine without them, and that we should focus on playing cards that are better for matches were we have to race the other deck like Eldrazi, Tron, and Titanshift.
That YP is bad when played on curve is a legitimate argument against it. This and the consideration that it's a bad top-deck should give anyone pause.
Young Pyromancer is bad on a curve against midrange decks, but I have played it on curve multiple times vs Aggro and Combo decks. Granted it can be bad on curve, but cards like Scavenging Ooze are also bad on curve yet are powerful.
Also, a lot of cards are bad topdecks. Delver of Secrets can be a bad topdeck as well. The thing is that if these aren't answered, they can create incremental value over the span of the game.
The argument that it's good with counter-magic backup is specious at best. What isn't?
I would also agree that counterspell argument isn't a good argument.
Also, Caleb Durward uploaded another YouTube video series of Grixis Delver. As predicted, he loses against Tron (albeit more to variance than being a bad deck) and also to Delver's natural enemy, Death & Taxes.
The reddit modern forum was hating him the other day and some of the things they were saying got a bit ridiculous.
I take anything reddit says with a massive grain of salt. This site too tbh. There's a lot of hyperbole that goes around in the MTG community and the internet really exacerbates it.
On another note, Caleb Durward recently said:
for a bit I experimented with Molten Rain as an anti-Tron package and it wasn't very good.
No Fulminators in his list though. He seems to have dropped land hate completely.
I am not trying to talk anyone out of playing YP. I got my boxers in a bind because of the post that ridiculed someone for bringing up the point that YP can be bad on curve.
Play YP, have fun, but don't ridicule valid objections and don't think you're going to talk me into playing it; been there done that, would not buy the tee-shirt.
Delver noobie here. I know this deck takes a lot of piloting to get better. I was just wondering some of the common lines of play that I should keep in mind when playing this deck? For example, the T3 Peezy makes sense after the above poster's reasoning, but my inexperience would probably have me play it T2 (Not saying it can't be played T2).
What are some other lines of play / combos to be aware of? I've been watching a lot of Kevin Jones's coverage to try and study the way he plays the deck. I notice a lot of end step thought scours..is this key to the T2 Tasigur? I also saw him flash a Snapcaster as a chump block, flashback KCommand, and take the Snapcaster back which blew my mind. I see a lot of mentioning of snap / kcommand combos but what are some other possibilities with these two cards?
Also a silly question about phases in general.. say for a snap-bolt-snap play, could this all be done on the other player's end step? I.e. They pass the turn, you bolt them, then flash a snapcaster, then flashback the same bolt? Are playing this many moves on the end step a legal line of play? Just unsure of how they all of these would line up on the stack.
I am not trying to talk anyone out of playing YP. I got my boxers in a bind because of the post that ridiculed someone for bringing up the point that YP can be bad on curve.
Play YP, have fun, but don't ridicule valid objections and don't think you're going to talk me into playing it; been there done that, would not buy the tee-shirt.
Nobody seems to be telling you to play Pyromancer either. They're saying that your objections are narrow and short sighted.
I notice a lot of end step thought scours..is this key to the T2 Tasigur?
Yes. The joke is that you can play an untapped Steam Vents so that you can cast Lightning Bolt or Thought Scour on turn 1, depending on what your opponent does. Shocking with a Watery Grave can now represent Scour or Fatal Push as well.
Are playing this many moves on the end step a legal line of play?
You can do as many things as you like in the end step as long as you have the mana and instant speed cards to use. So yeah, Bolt/Snap/Bolt is totally a thing you can do on your opponent's end step, since Bolt is an instant and Snap has flash.
So are we best just taking that match as a loss? It seems like his reasoning was land hate just doesn't do it so I'll just shave the hate from the 75 and hope to dodge it.
Are playing this many moves on the end step a legal line of play?
You can do as many things as you like in the end step as long as you have the mana and instant speed cards to use. So yeah, Bolt/Snap/Bolt is totally a thing you can do on your opponent's end step, since Bolt is an instant and Snap has flash.
Also, FYI, if an opponent has to discard to hand size, that takes place in the cleanup step, AFTER the end step. After discard, it goes immediately to your turn, so if you want to do something on an opponent's end step and they go to discard, you have to do it before they discard. The first time it happened to me, I was definitely a little caught off guard, but it hasn't happened since becoming aware of that.
So are we best just taking that match as a loss? It seems like his reasoning was land hate just doesn't do it so I'll just shave the hate from the 75 and hope to dodge it.
He was playing Ceremonious Rejection instead, which makes sense to me since it hits Eldrazi and Affinity as well. It seems like his plan is to board in Rejection and Cryptics and hope to pressure rather than playing land hate.
It's an interesting line and I don't dislike it. Tron is so hard that sometimes land hate doesn't save you anyways. It makes sense to play cards that are better in more matchups and hope to get lucky.
Yeah lol, although it think it's fair to wonder if Peezy is still a worthwhile include for the deck, it has to be a serious discussion about his playability. The reddit modern forum was hating him the other day and some of the things they were saying got a bit ridiculous.
Agreed that it's fair to consider cutting or modifying his number, but at least stick with legit arguments.
Also, I wouldn't really put too much trust in Reddit's opinion of anything. Let the facts speak for themselves: virtually every single well-placed Grixis Delver list (Excepting Overturf) in the past couple months has been lists with Young Pyromancer. Maybe a YP-less version now might be good, but since my initial posts thinking of going for a more Overturf build, I've changed my mind and still plan on keeping 2 in my list.
That YP is bad when played on curve is a legitimate argument against it. This and the consideration that it's a bad top-deck should give anyone pause.
The argument that it's good with counter-magic backup is specious at best. What isn't?
No, I don't think it's (the poor on curve critique) a legitimate argument because always taking a card's spot on the curve as the CMC on the upper right hand corner of the card is wrong. Pyromancer's spot on the curve would be 2 if u lined it up in xmage or cockatrice or w/e, but its really not the "real curve". Other good examples of this are Abbot of Keral Keep and Snapcaster mage. Does it make sense to play these on turn 2 and then complain that they suck on curve? No, it would be ridiculous because its quite plain to see that these guys aren't meant to be paid for using your last 2 mana, which is your only mana on turn 2. (side note: this is why so many people find abbot clunky, because they're all tied up in that upper right corner and trying desperately to cast him early, instead of understanding he has to be built around, just like delver)
The argument that it's good with countermagic is valid - you save tasigur or angler or delver with countermagic, they're alive but still exactly the same for your efforts. You save YP with countermagic, you have another 1/1. I thought this was straightforward enough that it didn't need elaboration.
inb4 why are u arguing so hard for yp: I'm not a HUUUGE fan of YP, but I acknowledge he can run away with games that go beyond turn 4. I'm not so into him that I want to run 4 and I have previously cut him totally, and at the peak I've run 3 (presently it's 2). I just feel that the arguments against YP are getting ridiculous (oh, he dies to bolt without value if u play him turn 2). The not-so-secret modern standard for a creature to be viable is that it provides value even if it gets removed the turn its played. It should be fairly obvious to even a moderately competent player that YP is not to be played "on curve".
I've always felt YP to be a bit awkward without GP. YP with a counterspells feels very awkward. I have YP out but I can't generate value until you cast a spell seems bad.
You: T3 Pyro
Them: Liliana, minus
You: Thought Scour/Bolt, sac the token. Untap and kill Liliana, hold up countermagic or cast more cantrips.
You: T3 Pyro
Them: Terminate
You: Spell Snare, make a token. Untap and attack for 3. Hold up countermagic or kill some dudes.
Hell, turn 3 Pyro into Fatal Push your Goyf is a great turn 3 play.
Pyromancer is fragile but you're hardly being fair in your portrayal.
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GRW Burn
EDH
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At the very least tell me you inquisition T1 to check if the coast is clear before you tap out and put peezy on the board. Starting with "T2: young pyro-" is just a display of poor play, not a poor card.
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Just because you never learned how to actually correctly play Young Pyromancer doesn't mean that it's a bad card. For starters, he was often a T3 play as MrM0nd4y describes.
There is a good reason why Kevin Jones did not recommend new players try Grixis Delver, and it was due to the steep learning curve.
Young Pyromancer was never for fighting just against midrange, but also against 1 for 1 removal from Control decks, and for Combo decks to push an ever increasing clock. As someone who also plays Grixis Delver in Legacy, Young Pyro is by far one of the best draws I can hope for vs combo and control decks.
In other news, I've decided upon a singleton Fatal Push (in addition to my normal amount of terminates, which is 4). It's a meta call, but I really don't think that it's nearly as sexy as people have been describing it. Please don't remove Terminates from your deck, you will regret it.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Peezer gives us another early play against decks where we need a clock, like tron and scapeshift. Yeah, a turn 2 peezer on the draw can be clunky/risky against tron, but as tron is the deck where a turn 2 snapcaster is often correct, a 2/1 that adds an extra point of power to the board every time you sneeze is still a very good clock.
And against midrange and control he's excellent as a 2 for 1 at least. A 1/1 doesn't seem like much, but a free 1/1 is a very cool thing. Peezy usually acts as like a mini pia and kiran in these matchups; card advantage is card advantage. And this isn't even getting into how he's our best answer to lili period.
So yeah, it's okay to talk about the downsides of peezer, but lets stick with his actual downsides (he's clunky in multiples, not great against hyperfast aggro, a bad topdeck).
Also, on the topic of fatal push. I used to run 2 terminates, 1 murderous cut, and 1 flex slot that sometimes became an extra terminate or a dreadbore. Now I'm running 2 terminates and 2 pushes. I do think fatal push is very sexy, as I've always loved running extra "bolts" but could only do it in certain metagames, but now push gives generic enough "bolts" to always be around. But 2 terminates is my absolute minimum, as opposing tasigurs and spaghetti monsters are very scary.
Agreed that it's fair to consider cutting or modifying his number, but at least stick with legit arguments.
Also, I wouldn't really put too much trust in Reddit's opinion of anything. Let the facts speak for themselves: virtually every single well-placed Grixis Delver list (Excepting Overturf) in the past couple months has been lists with Young Pyromancer. Maybe a YP-less version now might be good, but since my initial posts thinking of going for a more Overturf build, I've changed my mind and still plan on keeping 2 in my list.
That YP is bad when played on curve is a legitimate argument against it. This and the consideration that it's a bad top-deck should give anyone pause.
The argument that it's good with counter-magic backup is specious at best. What isn't?
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Commander:WUG
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Besides, it gives an optional way of winning the game. We rely on Delver or Delve creatures often, this lets us go wide. That can be tough to deal with.
I'll stick to this line of thought. It really comes down to threat density and playstyle of choice.
Overturf has a very good understanding of the format, but makes really odd choices to combat it. I'm not sure that BM is going to do it in this meta.
His SB choices for Grixis delver are odd to me too. Like I can see the value in adding Cavern to resolve snapcasters, but it seems negligible to me and I don't think it makes a significant difference. In a vacuum a card like Painful Truths seems more powerful against blue mirrors.
I also don't think Fulminator does the job here either. I completely understand the versatility over Molten Rain and Crumble, but I don't believe that it's worth the inconsistency it adds to your delver flips. I think that matchups like Nahiri Control and Jund are completely fine without them, and that we should focus on playing cards that are better for matches were we have to race the other deck like Eldrazi, Tron, and Titanshift.
URBURB
Young Pyromancer is bad on a curve against midrange decks, but I have played it on curve multiple times vs Aggro and Combo decks. Granted it can be bad on curve, but cards like Scavenging Ooze are also bad on curve yet are powerful.
Also, a lot of cards are bad topdecks. Delver of Secrets can be a bad topdeck as well. The thing is that if these aren't answered, they can create incremental value over the span of the game.
I would also agree that counterspell argument isn't a good argument.
Also, Caleb Durward uploaded another YouTube video series of Grixis Delver. As predicted, he loses against Tron (albeit more to variance than being a bad deck) and also to Delver's natural enemy, Death & Taxes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd7WEYMxw60&list=PL04lbfeNAaS_UtHse68AlqzIeSGWzbrRP
I take anything reddit says with a massive grain of salt. This site too tbh. There's a lot of hyperbole that goes around in the MTG community and the internet really exacerbates it.
On another note, Caleb Durward recently said:
No Fulminators in his list though. He seems to have dropped land hate completely.
URW Control
WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer
Play YP, have fun, but don't ridicule valid objections and don't think you're going to talk me into playing it; been there done that, would not buy the tee-shirt.
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BW Knights(Rotated)Pioneer: RW Knights - BW Rally Zombies - UW Heroes
Commander:WUG
Jenara, Asura of War- WGSigarda, Host of HeronsCasualties of economicsLegacy: Good-night, sweet prince. Mono-R Burn
What are some other lines of play / combos to be aware of? I've been watching a lot of Kevin Jones's coverage to try and study the way he plays the deck. I notice a lot of end step thought scours..is this key to the T2 Tasigur? I also saw him flash a Snapcaster as a chump block, flashback KCommand, and take the Snapcaster back which blew my mind. I see a lot of mentioning of snap / kcommand combos but what are some other possibilities with these two cards?
Also a silly question about phases in general.. say for a snap-bolt-snap play, could this all be done on the other player's end step? I.e. They pass the turn, you bolt them, then flash a snapcaster, then flashback the same bolt? Are playing this many moves on the end step a legal line of play? Just unsure of how they all of these would line up on the stack.
Hope that all made sense, thanks in advance!
Nobody seems to be telling you to play Pyromancer either. They're saying that your objections are narrow and short sighted.
Yes. The joke is that you can play an untapped Steam Vents so that you can cast Lightning Bolt or Thought Scour on turn 1, depending on what your opponent does. Shocking with a Watery Grave can now represent Scour or Fatal Push as well.
You can do as many things as you like in the end step as long as you have the mana and instant speed cards to use. So yeah, Bolt/Snap/Bolt is totally a thing you can do on your opponent's end step, since Bolt is an instant and Snap has flash.
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WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer
URBURB
Also, FYI, if an opponent has to discard to hand size, that takes place in the cleanup step, AFTER the end step. After discard, it goes immediately to your turn, so if you want to do something on an opponent's end step and they go to discard, you have to do it before they discard. The first time it happened to me, I was definitely a little caught off guard, but it hasn't happened since becoming aware of that.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
He was playing Ceremonious Rejection instead, which makes sense to me since it hits Eldrazi and Affinity as well. It seems like his plan is to board in Rejection and Cryptics and hope to pressure rather than playing land hate.
It's an interesting line and I don't dislike it. Tron is so hard that sometimes land hate doesn't save you anyways. It makes sense to play cards that are better in more matchups and hope to get lucky.
And great point, cfusion. Timing is everything.
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WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer
No, I don't think it's (the poor on curve critique) a legitimate argument because always taking a card's spot on the curve as the CMC on the upper right hand corner of the card is wrong. Pyromancer's spot on the curve would be 2 if u lined it up in xmage or cockatrice or w/e, but its really not the "real curve". Other good examples of this are Abbot of Keral Keep and Snapcaster mage. Does it make sense to play these on turn 2 and then complain that they suck on curve? No, it would be ridiculous because its quite plain to see that these guys aren't meant to be paid for using your last 2 mana, which is your only mana on turn 2. (side note: this is why so many people find abbot clunky, because they're all tied up in that upper right corner and trying desperately to cast him early, instead of understanding he has to be built around, just like delver)
The argument that it's good with countermagic is valid - you save tasigur or angler or delver with countermagic, they're alive but still exactly the same for your efforts. You save YP with countermagic, you have another 1/1. I thought this was straightforward enough that it didn't need elaboration.
inb4 why are u arguing so hard for yp: I'm not a HUUUGE fan of YP, but I acknowledge he can run away with games that go beyond turn 4. I'm not so into him that I want to run 4 and I have previously cut him totally, and at the peak I've run 3 (presently it's 2). I just feel that the arguments against YP are getting ridiculous (oh, he dies to bolt without value if u play him turn 2). The not-so-secret modern standard for a creature to be viable is that it provides value even if it gets removed the turn its played. It should be fairly obvious to even a moderately competent player that YP is not to be played "on curve".
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Anyone thinking about Disallow?