The thing about blood moon IMO is i am in doubt i can close the game fast enough before they can recover from the moon. I like me molten rains coupled with a well timed extraction to permanently(ish?) deal with the land threat. I thought about crumble but it does not beat the nuts.
Isn't magma spray just a pure upgrade to pillar of flame since instant speed is better than sorcery? Just trying to help a fellow delver player out. This is a response to Sonnenrad. I'm new to forums.
You're all good, and honestly it's a fair point. As Kyburn points out, I prefer Pillar of Flame because it can still do 2 damage to an opponent whereas Magma Spray can be dead sometimes. I'll be the first to say it's a meta pick and maybe not something that I'd like in a huge tournament.
Ceremonious Rejection is an option to help the Tron matchup that I have not seen listed here. (I only scanned over a few of the most recent pages so might have missed it).
The thing about blood moon IMO is i am in doubt i can close the game fast enough before they can recover from the moon. I like me molten rains coupled with a well timed extraction to permanently(ish?) deal with the land threat. I thought about crumble but it does not beat the nuts.
This is exactly why I stopped using blood moon and switched to moltens and/or crumbles. Moon slows them down but not so significantly that our low threat density can close before the first wurmcoil. Also worth noting is that any early Delvers plunked down can be pyroclasmed and one does not have any og the maindeck 6-10 counterspells on hand. Blood Moon is great if you have at least 2 threats pushing the clock, like turn 1 delver turn 2 tas turn 3 moon would be ideal. But again I dont see how molten rain in that situation would not also close up the game.
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Pillar of flame being sorcery speed seems like a huge downgrade from instant speed with magma spray against the decks where it's relevant. The only creature you dont need the instant speed against is voice of resurgence. Otherwise you're playing an awful card that still leaves you open to them just comboing off on their turn.
I'm not sure that we need to sideboard much for that deck. In my experience Coco just isn't very good. Unless they really nut out you can just sit on a tasigur or gurmag and burn/counter their creatures until they die.
The thing about blood moon IMO is i am in doubt i can close the game fast enough before they can recover from the moon. I like me molten rains coupled with a well timed extraction to permanently(ish?) deal with the land threat. I thought about crumble but it does not beat the nuts.
I dont see how molten rain in that situation would not also close up the game.
For the same reason FMage doesn't, because they can simply search for another land with Stirrings, Scrying, Map and eggs. Also, a turn4/5 FMage does much less than a turn3 one, while a turn4/5 Moon with two islands and a Swamp allows us to slow them while we play normally.
If you have gotten to turn 5 before u drew moon you already lost, unless you had a clean answer for all 3 turns that elapsed with tron online, which is doubtful. It is possible to delver turn 1 and moon turn 3 and still lose, so long as you don't have the threats to close up. In that scenario, I'd just rather not include enchantments that don't flip delver, are useless in multiples, and don't reduce the opponent life total. (not sure why FMage was brought up as I didn't mention it at all, its a different animal from Rain)
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What do you guys think about the RG Scapeshift matchup? It is a hard matchup and after rewatching Corey Burkhart's videos against it, it seems like Grixis Control is a lot better against Scapeshift because of Cryptic Command.
Scapeshift itself isn't the problem because we have Countersquall/Negate. Primeval Titan is the problem here with only Mana Leak as the only card that can counter it (which doesn't always work).
I've been playing against the RG matchup a bit, the match up is really hard to win, you need a turn 1 or 2 threat and then you gotta draw a lot of counters. I think you need to keep in some number of terminate for the match up because that can save you up to 18 damage in the late game, it doesn't always feel great but it still flips delver of top!
Hey everyone, I've recently been testing Grixis Delver on MTGO. I had a short playlist on YouTube with a bit of commentary that will hopefully be helpful to new and veteran players alike. Click to go to playlist here. You'll be able to see an Ad Nauseum, Jeskai Flash, and Grishoalbrand matchup along with a deck tech to explain some card choices.
Because this was my first time doing something like this, two of the videos got corrupted so I wasn't able to share the entire Modern Competitive League. If anybody is interested in the Esper Control or Abzan Midrange matchup, I can talk about those through text.
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Check out some Magic Gameplay and Commentary videos here, including Modern Grixis, Jeskai, and Esper videos as well as some Standard and Drafts too: My YouTube Channel!
Well, sorry for the delay guys but food poisoning is hell. Also, this is the second time I'm writing this because I accidentally refreshed my page the first time.... derp. So the descriptions are going to be much shorter due to my patience.
Overall I went 5/4, as I explained the other day. But they went like this:
Round 1 Abzan midrange, win the die roll
Won 2/1. Crushed game 1 my keeping up counters until he was out of cards then dropped Tas. Lost game 2 after grinding him out when he top decked two souls in a row with him at 12 and me at nine with Snap and Tas on board. I crush a quick game 3 where i saw my first delver of the match, he was forced to path it, which allowed me to ramp to a quick fish holding leak for Liliana.
SB: -2 Snare, -2 Scour, +2 Squall +2 EE
Round 2: Boros burn (smart, low on creatures high on spells)
This round revolved around how many Snares I had and if I was able to stabilize the board and clock him. Game 2 he got ahead of me, and topped a bolt with me at 2 but game 3 I cast 5 Snares.
SB: -2 Remand, -3 Terminate, -1 Kommand, +1 Brutality, +1 Dispel, +2 Pierce, + 2 Spray.
Overall 2/0
Round 3 BTL Scapeshift Black
I keep too many terminates and no counterspells the first game, getting him to 4 with Tasigur, which got Damnationed, then snap bolting him and using termintes to get snapcaster by STEve. Game 2 I kept a loose 7 of Leak, leak, remand, Squall, 2 fetches, Serum and got punished by not finding a threat until turn 4, and getting mega flooded. I was ahead on lands until he killed me on 8 lands.
SB: -3 terminate, -2 push, -1 bolt, +3 Squall, + 1 Brutality, +2 Pierce
Overall 2/1
Round 4 Naya burn
I crushed him 2-0 in uninteresting but fun fashion because his deck was more reliant on creatures that die to removal.
SB: same as round two, but keep out the sprays and in 2 terminate so I can answer Cat. Might should have boarded in EE here, but felt too mana inefficient.
Overall: 3/1
Round 5 Infect
I lose game one to him top decking the third Nuxus and me being on the draw after killing elf, agent, and two Inkmoth. win game two by slamming turn 1 EE on one to timewalk him until he finds an irrelevant creature to die to push later while Tasigur gets busy on turn two. Game three I get stuck on two lands with only terminates and no way to two-spell him eot to overcome his protection. I believe I died turn five when he sheepishly shows me an embarrassment of riches in his hand.
Round 6 RUG prowess (splashing G for Blossoming Defense, neat).
We play two fun (for me) games where I efficiently answer his stuff and eventually play Banana King to beat down.
I think i took out remand and added EE.
Round 7: Jeskai Nahiri
I get paired against a buddy round the 7 and play three games of blue mirror. He squeaks game 2 by top decking Colonnade being out of cards to my 2leaks, Remand, Snare and i can't find Push. I slam turn two tas game three after switching AV back out for delver since we had 4 minutes left after game 2. I was able to grind him out of cards all three games after not seeing a single AV, so I wonder if these slots would be better allocated to other matchups.
I think I already explained my last two rounds a few days ago. I'll list my deck below for reference, and again my apologies for the short descriptions, but after an hour typing the first one I don't have the patience the retype it all. Fell free to question. I believe if I take out the AV'S those slots should go to jeating Big Mana Combo, probably via Blood Moon since it hits the hardest while I clock. These matchups where the only time I missed Pyro, but against everything else, Fish was great because of how good the deck is a turtling and playing defensively.
Hey guys I was able to win the Baltimore regionals with Grixis Delver and I'm going to try and get around to writing a Tournament report/deck guide soon! Here's the decklist:
Thanks! This deck's worst match-up is by far is Tron and the issue I have with cards like Fulminator Mage and Molten Rain against Tron is they don't actually solve our problem. We can't beat Tron going long, and it's hard to kill them before they get to that point. A single land destruction spell will buy us 1 turn, but if they have another copy of that piece it didn't really accomplish anything. If we don't have a threat in play when resolving Mage or Molten Rain we've basically taken an entire turn off to get nowhere. Sure we can rebuy Fulminator with Kcommand but that is way too slow to beat Tron. Iv'e found that a resolved Crumble is the easiest way to beat this horrendous match-up. The only real way they can stop it is countering it with Warping Wail. On the draw we can still lose to an early resolved Karn Liberated , but hopefully we have a counterspell into a Crumble. Crumble also has utility against R/G Scapeshift, which I did play against and used Crumble to exile all of his Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle in one of the sideboard games and easily won from there.
Moon is the nuts vs big manna in Monkey Grow, but then again that deck is way more aggressive than Grixis, and way better at flipping little D. But the philosophy is the same, present a clock, then slowing them three+ turns with moon is good enough.
Third time playing last night and went 1-2-1, which I guess is better than my 1-3 the last two times. Despite the numbers I feel I'm getting more comfortable playing the deck. Playing an early Tas and riding it to victory or flooding with pyro tokens just felt great.
I know Dreadbore is not a thing in any current decks, but my LGS seems flooded with Planeswalkers and I feel it could be helpful. Are there any other card options to deal with them? I know it's slow at sorcery speed but I was thinking about it.
Also, what decks are Collective Brutality particularly good against? In the matches I've played so far, it just feels kinda dead most of the time. Thinking about taking the 1 in my MD and putting 2 in my Side. I also feel the same way about Spell Snare. I understand that the greatest majority of threats are 2 drops, but like Brutality (or even moreso) I feel like I find myself just holding it and never able to use it.
PS Congrats Rhinocoin! Can't wait to see your write up!
I've been preaching about crumble. All the big mana deck players say its the most savage against them. Sure it's 4 mana, but its one and done most of the time, instead of having to combo with surgical.
Went 3-2 the other day with my cryptic delver list. Won against tron, abzan and fish... lost against tron and fish. Yeah my meta is tough for the my deck. The tron game he top decked like a champ which had me quite salty lol, but that's how it goes. Went 3-1 the previous time, beating grixis control, burn, and something else I can't remember right now, and losing to burn. Still loving creepy in my 60, but I went down to 2 cryptic instead of 3. It's basically rhinocoin's (congrats) 60, -1 electrolyze, -1 collective, -1 fatal push, +1 land, +2 cryptic. The mana base is closer to grixis control also, but it's identical.
@rhinocoin Can't wait for the tourney report! Sounds like it was an exciting event, and hats off to you and all the grixis delver players for keeping the deck on the map.
Finished building this deck this week and I have little to no experience in modern. Piloted Grixis Delver for the first time yesterday and lost in the final vs INfect. This deck is sick. I won vs Tron and Jund easily I love Grixis Delver so much lol.
By the average time you can actually cast Crumble, it's way past being relevant. Being a sorcery speed 4 drop in a deck that MIGHT hit 4 lands by turn 5 or 6 sounds awful.
Edit: after watching, I like many of the other changes he has made, especially P&K in the board. I still greatly disagree with Crumble, but maybe I'll try it out again...
Thanks for the welcome
This is all much easier when done on the computer instead of a phone
This is exactly why I stopped using blood moon and switched to moltens and/or crumbles. Moon slows them down but not so significantly that our low threat density can close before the first wurmcoil. Also worth noting is that any early Delvers plunked down can be pyroclasmed and one does not have any og the maindeck 6-10 counterspells on hand. Blood Moon is great if you have at least 2 threats pushing the clock, like turn 1 delver turn 2 tas turn 3 moon would be ideal. But again I dont see how molten rain in that situation would not also close up the game.
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I'm not sure that we need to sideboard much for that deck. In my experience Coco just isn't very good. Unless they really nut out you can just sit on a tasigur or gurmag and burn/counter their creatures until they die.
If you have gotten to turn 5 before u drew moon you already lost, unless you had a clean answer for all 3 turns that elapsed with tron online, which is doubtful. It is possible to delver turn 1 and moon turn 3 and still lose, so long as you don't have the threats to close up. In that scenario, I'd just rather not include enchantments that don't flip delver, are useless in multiples, and don't reduce the opponent life total. (not sure why FMage was brought up as I didn't mention it at all, its a different animal from Rain)
BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
Scapeshift itself isn't the problem because we have Countersquall/Negate. Primeval Titan is the problem here with only Mana Leak as the only card that can counter it (which doesn't always work).
Because this was my first time doing something like this, two of the videos got corrupted so I wasn't able to share the entire Modern Competitive League. If anybody is interested in the Esper Control or Abzan Midrange matchup, I can talk about those through text.
Overall I went 5/4, as I explained the other day. But they went like this:
Round 1 Abzan midrange, win the die roll
Won 2/1. Crushed game 1 my keeping up counters until he was out of cards then dropped Tas. Lost game 2 after grinding him out when he top decked two souls in a row with him at 12 and me at nine with Snap and Tas on board. I crush a quick game 3 where i saw my first delver of the match, he was forced to path it, which allowed me to ramp to a quick fish holding leak for Liliana.
SB: -2 Snare, -2 Scour, +2 Squall +2 EE
Round 2: Boros burn (smart, low on creatures high on spells)
This round revolved around how many Snares I had and if I was able to stabilize the board and clock him. Game 2 he got ahead of me, and topped a bolt with me at 2 but game 3 I cast 5 Snares.
SB: -2 Remand, -3 Terminate, -1 Kommand, +1 Brutality, +1 Dispel, +2 Pierce, + 2 Spray.
Overall 2/0
Round 3 BTL Scapeshift Black
I keep too many terminates and no counterspells the first game, getting him to 4 with Tasigur, which got Damnationed, then snap bolting him and using termintes to get snapcaster by STEve. Game 2 I kept a loose 7 of Leak, leak, remand, Squall, 2 fetches, Serum and got punished by not finding a threat until turn 4, and getting mega flooded. I was ahead on lands until he killed me on 8 lands.
SB: -3 terminate, -2 push, -1 bolt, +3 Squall, + 1 Brutality, +2 Pierce
Overall 2/1
Round 4 Naya burn
I crushed him 2-0 in uninteresting but fun fashion because his deck was more reliant on creatures that die to removal.
SB: same as round two, but keep out the sprays and in 2 terminate so I can answer Cat. Might should have boarded in EE here, but felt too mana inefficient.
Overall: 3/1
Round 5 Infect
I lose game one to him top decking the third Nuxus and me being on the draw after killing elf, agent, and two Inkmoth. win game two by slamming turn 1 EE on one to timewalk him until he finds an irrelevant creature to die to push later while Tasigur gets busy on turn two. Game three I get stuck on two lands with only terminates and no way to two-spell him eot to overcome his protection. I believe I died turn five when he sheepishly shows me an embarrassment of riches in his hand.
SB: -2 Remand, -1 snare, - 2 Leak, +2 EE, +2 Spray, +1 Brutality
Overall 3/2
Round 6 RUG prowess (splashing G for Blossoming Defense, neat).
We play two fun (for me) games where I efficiently answer his stuff and eventually play Banana King to beat down.
I think i took out remand and added EE.
Round 7: Jeskai Nahiri
I get paired against a buddy round the 7 and play three games of blue mirror. He squeaks game 2 by top decking Colonnade being out of cards to my 2leaks, Remand, Snare and i can't find Push. I slam turn two tas game three after switching AV back out for delver since we had 4 minutes left after game 2. I was able to grind him out of cards all three games after not seeing a single AV, so I wonder if these slots would be better allocated to other matchups.
SB: -4 Delver, -3 Terminate, -1 Bolt, +3 Squall, +4 AV, +1 Dispel
Overall 5/2
I think I already explained my last two rounds a few days ago. I'll list my deck below for reference, and again my apologies for the short descriptions, but after an hour typing the first one I don't have the patience the retype it all. Fell free to question. I believe if I take out the AV'S those slots should go to jeating Big Mana Combo, probably via Blood Moon since it hits the hardest while I clock. These matchups where the only time I missed Pyro, but against everything else, Fish was great because of how good the deck is a turtling and playing defensively.
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Snapcaster Mage
3 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
1 Gurmag Angler
Spells:29
2 Fatal Push
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Serum Visions
4 Spell Snare
4 Thought Scour
4 Mana Leak
2 Remand
3 Terminate
2 Kolaghan's Command
1 Blood Crypt
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Island
1 Mountain
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Steam Vents
1 Swamp
2 Watery Grave
4 Ancestral Vision
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Dispel
2 Magma Spray
2 Spell Pierce
1 Collective Brutality
3 Countersquall
1 Gurmag Angler
4 Snapcaster Mage
3 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
1 Vendilion Clique
2 Island
1 Mountain
1 Swamp
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Darkslick Shores
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Spirebluff Canal
2 Steam Vents
1 Watery Grave
3 Fatal Push
2 Kolaghan's Command
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Mana Leak
3 Spell Snare
2 Terminate
4 Thought Scour
1 Collective Brutality
4 Serum Visions
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Izzet Staticaster
2 Countersquall
2 Dispel
1 Magma Spray
1 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
1 Collective Brutality
2 Crumble to Dust
2 Painful Truths
1 Vandalblast
1 Desolate Lighthouse
I know Dreadbore is not a thing in any current decks, but my LGS seems flooded with Planeswalkers and I feel it could be helpful. Are there any other card options to deal with them? I know it's slow at sorcery speed but I was thinking about it.
Also, what decks are Collective Brutality particularly good against? In the matches I've played so far, it just feels kinda dead most of the time. Thinking about taking the 1 in my MD and putting 2 in my Side. I also feel the same way about Spell Snare. I understand that the greatest majority of threats are 2 drops, but like Brutality (or even moreso) I feel like I find myself just holding it and never able to use it.
PS Congrats Rhinocoin! Can't wait to see your write up!
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH2trISpLdA
His decklist is updated and with Fatal Push.
He is also trying out Crumble to Dust !!!
Went 3-2 the other day with my cryptic delver list. Won against tron, abzan and fish... lost against tron and fish. Yeah my meta is tough for the my deck. The tron game he top decked like a champ which had me quite salty lol, but that's how it goes. Went 3-1 the previous time, beating grixis control, burn, and something else I can't remember right now, and losing to burn. Still loving creepy in my 60, but I went down to 2 cryptic instead of 3. It's basically rhinocoin's (congrats) 60, -1 electrolyze, -1 collective, -1 fatal push, +1 land, +2 cryptic. The mana base is closer to grixis control also, but it's identical.
@rhinocoin Can't wait for the tourney report! Sounds like it was an exciting event, and hats off to you and all the grixis delver players for keeping the deck on the map.
By the average time you can actually cast Crumble, it's way past being relevant. Being a sorcery speed 4 drop in a deck that MIGHT hit 4 lands by turn 5 or 6 sounds awful.
Edit: after watching, I like many of the other changes he has made, especially P&K in the board. I still greatly disagree with Crumble, but maybe I'll try it out again...
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
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