Went 4-1 tonight taking 3rd... Losing to bant eldrazi g3 due to screw...
I played the 3 scour 3 ancestral 3 delver list, and it was great.
Beat taking turns, burn, eldrazi tron and goryo.
I got a chance to test kalitas in burn. Casted him at 7 life, tapped out and opponent had one card in hand. Could have been boros and draw a burn spell, but he didn't and you can imagine kalitas took over. Pretty high risk high reward in that matchup. Unless they have the path then its just bad. lol.
Went 4-1 tonight taking 3rd... Losing to bant eldrazi g3 due to screw...
I played the 3 scour 3 ancestral 3 delver list, and it was great.
Beat taking turns, burn, eldrazi tron and goryo.
I got a chance to test kalitas in burn. Casted him at 7 life, tapped out and opponent had one card in hand. Could have been boros and draw a burn spell, but he didn't and you can imagine kalitas took over. Pretty high risk high reward in that matchup. Unless they have the path then its just bad. lol.
I had the complete opposite results haha. It was a small sample size, but I just wanted to test it in a Modern Competitive League, and while I will put some of the losses to variance and bad mulligans, I did only go 2-3. I also took the deck to my local tourney and went 1-1-1, losing to Grixis Delver, drawing against Jeskai Nahiri, and beating Lantern Control.
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So what do you guys board out against Abzan Midrange?
For Jund, I just take out the Delvers to put more grindy cards. But for Abzan, I have a lot of trouble to find space to board out because Delver is actually very good against Lingering Soul's tokens.
What I board in: Izzet Staticaster, Painful Truths, Desolated Lighthouse.
A card I have been looking to include as a 1 of for testing: Hands of Binding. If bouncing and trying to counter creatures isn't something that blue is effective at, why not try to "freeze" something down? I like the card in the deck because we have Delver of Secrets to cipher it on. You can also snap cipher it later as well, the spell will exile but the encode portion will allow you to do it since it is meeting the exile clause. It being a sorcery is the only downside I see. As an example:
T1: Play Delver
T2: Delver flips. Cast Hands of Binding on their creature(taps it) encode it and attack with Delver dealing combat damage to tap down another creature(if any). Those two creatures won't untap on opp's turn.
T3: Delver connects but this time he can only keep locking one down.
The good part about this spell is the continuing free portion of it when you keep connecting. I know killing or countering is better but I could see some potential using this.
Commander GUR Maelstrom Wanderer BWU Sydri, Galvanic Genius BGB Meren of Clan Nel Toth WGW Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith RRR Feldon of the Third Path WWW Heliod, God of the Sun
@9tailz: I would be interested in your full list. Mind sharing it? Congrats on your record btw
Hey my bad for late reply. If you can't wait and wanna check out my lists, they are on previous pages! They are all fairly similar. I ran paradox' suggested list last time, which ran 3 Scour, 3 delver and 3 ancestral. I personally might make the switch back to moving ancestral to sb. I will update this post in a bit with the most recent list!
@9tailz: I would be interested in your full list. Mind sharing it? Congrats on your record btw
Hey my bad for late reply. If you can't wait and wanna check out my lists, they are on previous pages! They are all fairly similar. I ran paradox' suggested list last time, which ran 3 Scour, 3 delver and 3 ancestral. I personally might make the switch back to moving ancestral to sb. I will update this post in a bit with the most recent list!
I was thinking about the pros and cons of running MB Delver and AV, and was kind of put off by the fact that there's a lot of Tron and other rampy decks at my LGS. But the more I think about it, I wonder if that's actually an OK time to run AV. You generally win by 1) landing an early threat, and then 2) having more answers than they have threats. I feel like the deferred payoff of AV is a big mark against it since you need to keep yourself stable until turn 5 at earliest to get anything out of it, but refilling after leaking/squalling/maybe cryptic-ing their first few threats may make up for it.
Thoughts?
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Playing UX Mana Denial until Modern gets the answers it needs.
WUBRG Humans BRW Mardu Pyromancer UW UW "Control" UR Blue Moon
TBH, I definitely prefer 21-22 lands and 2-4 cryptics in my list in whatever meta. My record has improved so much since I switched. I don't keep track, but I post here my results and I feel like 90% of them I'm top 3. So going off that alone, I do recommend the switch haha. Delver and ancestral both shine in different match ups. I think it's up to you at that point which one to mb. I actually really like the list paradox suggested with the the 3/3/3/3 split. It's very balanced. The ONLY thing I'm ehh about is cutting a Scour, just because I'm a huge fan of 2/1 tas fish split.
@9tailz: I would be interested in your full list. Mind sharing it? Congrats on your record btw
Hey my bad for late reply. If you can't wait and wanna check out my lists, they are on previous pages! They are all fairly similar. I ran paradox' suggested list last time, which ran 3 Scour, 3 delver and 3 ancestral. I personally might make the switch back to moving ancestral to sb. I will update this post in a bit with the most recent list!
I was thinking about the pros and cons of running MB Delver and AV, and was kind of put off by the fact that there's a lot of Tron and other rampy decks at my LGS. But the more I think about it, I wonder if that's actually an OK time to run AV. You generally win by 1) landing an early threat, and then 2) having more answers than they have threats. I feel like the deferred payoff of AV is a big mark against it since you need to keep yourself stable until turn 5 at earliest to get anything out of it, but refilling after leaking/squalling/maybe cryptic-ing their first few threats may make up for it.
@9tailz: I would be interested in your full list. Mind sharing it? Congrats on your record btw
Hey my bad for late reply. If you can't wait and wanna check out my lists, they are on previous pages! They are all fairly similar. I ran paradox' suggested list last time, which ran 3 Scour, 3 delver and 3 ancestral. I personally might make the switch back to moving ancestral to sb. I will update this post in a bit with the most recent list!
I was thinking about the pros and cons of running MB Delver and AV, and was kind of put off by the fact that there's a lot of Tron and other rampy decks at my LGS. But the more I think about it, I wonder if that's actually an OK time to run AV. You generally win by 1) landing an early threat, and then 2) having more answers than they have threats. I feel like the deferred payoff of AV is a big mark against it since you need to keep yourself stable until turn 5 at earliest to get anything out of it, but refilling after leaking/squalling/maybe cryptic-ing their first few threats may make up for it.
Thoughts?
So I was actually gonna say, I might be the only one who does this, but I keep delvers in and bring in ancestral against tron. I've had both in my opener, and I usually drop delver first. It's been great so far.
You'll see in my upcoming video how I talk about the fusion of AV + Delver in the same list and I personally didn't like it. I'm glad you had success, 9tailz, but I do like sticking to the more streamlined Delver + Cryptic list, and that's it.
I feel AVs are currently stronger in the sideboard, but that's just my opinion and more of a statement to the overall meta rather than a hard fact. I've been having far more success without AV in the mainboard, as there are some matchups that are really very fast these days that AV is a huge liability. Naya Bushwacker is picking up lots of steam and they can go off as early as Turn 2 and if you don't have Spell Snare, it quickly becomes damage control where a T1 Ancestral is basically dead (whereas at least Delver can block).
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I feel it brotha. My preference is moving av to sb. Speaking of Bushwhacker.. my friend t1 land, exile ssg, manamorphose, manamorphose, burning tree, burning tree, burning tree, bushwhacker, swing, go. On my turn I played a land and thought scoured -_-
I feel it brotha. My preference is moving av to sb. Speaking of Bushwhacker.. my friend t1 land, exile ssg, manamorphose, manamorphose, burning tree, burning tree, burning tree, bushwhacker, swing, go. On my turn I played a land and thought scoured -_-
The deck is pretty nuts and they go so wide that they really tax our single-target removal spells. The difference with Bushwacker vs Affinity is that Affinity has key powerhouses (Plating, Ravager, Overseer) where Bushwacker has a bunch of creatures that are all relatively equal in power and can go so wide. I'm having a hard time dealing with the deck and I don't know how to be prepared for it without taking away too much from other matchups (MB and SB). Probably need more early counters (Mana Leak, Spell Snare). After my next video series is out I'll need to do even more tuning to stay ahead of the meta.
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I feel it brotha. My preference is moving av to sb. Speaking of Bushwhacker.. my friend t1 land, exile ssg, manamorphose, manamorphose, burning tree, burning tree, burning tree, bushwhacker, swing, go. On my turn I played a land and thought scoured -_-
The deck is pretty nuts and they go so wide that they really tax our single-target removal spells. The difference with Bushwacker vs Affinity is that Affinity has key powerhouses (Plating, Ravager, Overseer) where Bushwacker has a bunch of creatures that are all relatively equal in power and can go so wide. I'm having a hard time dealing with the deck and I don't know how to be prepared for it without taking away too much from other matchups (MB and SB). Probably need more early counters (Mana Leak, Spell Snare). After my next video series is out I'll need to do even more tuning to stay ahead of the meta.
I've been on 3 Cryptic, 4 Leak, and 2-3 Snare maindeck (depending on if I'm going 2 or 3 Kommand) plus usually 3ish more in the board (Dispel, Squall, etc.) and it's been a huge help. I'm not the best at reading when it's right to hold up for counters vs. build my board vs. cantrip, but even so they've done a ton of work for me.
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WUBRG Humans BRW Mardu Pyromancer UW UW "Control" UR Blue Moon
You'll see in my upcoming video how I talk about the fusion of AV + Delver in the same list and I personally didn't like it. I'm glad you had success, 9tailz, but I do like sticking to the more streamlined Delver + Cryptic list, and that's it.
I feel AVs are currently stronger in the sideboard, but that's just my opinion and more of a statement to the overall meta rather than a hard fact. I've been having far more success without AV in the mainboard, as there are some matchups that are really very fast these days that AV is a huge liability. Naya Bushwacker is picking up lots of steam and they can go off as early as Turn 2 and if you don't have Spell Snare, it quickly becomes damage control where a T1 Ancestral is basically dead (whereas at least Delver can block).
It's becoming really tough for Delver in a format in which the most powerful decks are those that are gaining the ability to go super wide as well as super high (Eldrazi Tron/Tron).
I haven't seen a lot of the Bushwhacker deck locally but I expect to see more of it because it's extremely cheap compared to a lot of Modern decks. Hell, I already have a lot of the cards from drafts/packs so I really just need some of the lands and the Goblin Guides. Anger of the Gods or Engineered Explosives is the way to go. The deck has a lot of "nut" hands compared to most decks I've seen.
I've been on 3 Cryptic, 4 Leak, and 2-3 Snare maindeck (depending on if I'm going 2 or 3 Kommand) plus usually 3ish more in the board (Dispel, Squall, etc.) and it's been a huge help. I'm not the best at reading when it's right to hold up for counters vs. build my board vs. cantrip, but even so they've done a ton of work for me.
I haven't tested it, but I like the sound of (3-3-3 Cryptic Command-Mana Leak-Spell Snare) as the counterspell suite, with 21-22 lands. I also have really been liking 3 Kolaghan's Command in almost all of my builds, but that's because the builds tend to lean towards being more controlling. Definitely need to play around with the numbers and see what feels good. I also have been liking 3 counters in the SB in the form of 2 Dispel/1 Negate (sometimes Countersquall, depends on if I'm worried about the double-black in 1 turn issues) so I think we're more or less on the same page.
It's becoming really tough for Delver in a format in which the most powerful decks are those that are gaining the ability to go super wide as well as super high (Eldrazi Tron/Tron).
I haven't seen a lot of the Bushwhacker deck locally but I expect to see more of it because it's extremely cheap compared to a lot of Modern decks. Hell, I already have a lot of the cards from drafts/packs so I really just need some of the lands and the Goblin Guides. Anger of the Gods or Engineered Explosives is the way to go. The deck has a lot of "nut" hands compared to most decks I've seen.
The thing with the online meta is that it can sometimes be extremely different than the paper meta. There's a lot of decks that are really easy to test out in MODO than to gather the paper pieces and play it in person. But I've seen a big uptick in a lot of Eldrazi variants, Bushwacker, GB Snek, and Death's Shadow Jund going up in the MTGO meta, and that may translate into paper meta during the next few big events. I'm currently on Anger of the Gods + Damnation as my sweepers of choice, but I may move back to Engineered Explosives. It just feels too slow sometimes, but you could get the same issue with Damnation so I'm not sure which is currently better positioned. And yes, the deck does have a pretty consistent "nut" draw. You'll see a good amount of them in my upcoming video series, unfortunately!
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The thing with the online meta is that it can sometimes be extremely different than the paper meta. There's a lot of decks that are really easy to test out in MODO than to gather the paper pieces and play it in person. But I've seen a big uptick in a lot of Eldrazi variants, Bushwacker, GB Snek, and Death's Shadow Jund going up in the MTGO meta, and that may translate into paper meta during the next few big events. I'm currently on Anger of the Gods + Damnation as my sweepers of choice, but I may move back to Engineered Explosives. It just feels too slow sometimes, but you could get the same issue with Damnation so I'm not sure which is currently better positioned. And yes, the deck does have a pretty consistent "nut" draw. You'll see a good amount of them in my upcoming video series, unfortunately!
My experience is from playing Cockatrice (I can't be assed to spend $800 on the same cards twice, I'd rather have duals ) and mine is roughly similar to yours. MTGO is probably still more ahead of the curve but I was playing vs Bushwacker after what seemed like a week after Aether Revolt.
Anecdotally, GB Snek and Bushwacker just tear us up. I've won vs GB Snek and Bushwacker only a handful of times (maybe 25%?) and they're hard to interact with, especially Snek, where every card is a must answer and we lack the exile effects to make them lose out on thopter tokens and the like. I realize that Engineered Explosives is slow but it's the best wide ranging answer, only next to Anger of the Gods of which I've put 1 in my sideboard. Might need to be 2, who knows.
All I know is that I feel the deck is getting to the point where it's stretched extremely thin in trying to deal with these decks that happen to have perfect counters to our deck. Snek taxes our threats, Bushwhacker taxes our answers, and Eldrazi Tron just goes over us.
One thing's for certain - people who complain Standard isn't adding to Modern are barking up the wrong tree. Snek and Bushwhacker are only viable because of Aether Revolt. And on the bright side, I'm having a lot of fun with playing with Cryptic Command!
I think you hit all the right notes about the decks that give us trouble. There's 2 routes the deck can and should take to handle these changes in the meta. The first is to be as aggressive as possible so that you can ignore the majority of what your opponent does. The issue with this choice (18-20 lands, 13-14 creatures) is that we are still a UBx deck, and these colors are extremely reactive in the form of removal spells and counterspells. It takes a fine mix of proactiveness and reactiveness in a wide meta, which can be difficult to pull off.
What's great about the second approach, which is the slightly higher land count and Cryptic Command is that Cryptic lets us do something very interesting, which is largely ignore what our opponent is doing via the tap all creatures mode, bounce target permanent mode, or counter target spell mode. It's an extremely versatile card in an extremely open meta that has game against lots of decks. The issue is surviving to cast the card. We can do that vs. half of the meta, but the other half will give us trouble, which is why I think we need to tune the deck to handle the early game in order to take advantage of our cheap threats and powerful top ends (K-Command + Cryptic + Snapcaster). This may sound a lot like what Grixis Control is trying to do, but we can also play the tempo game in the form of Delver of Secrets against Eldrazi, Tron, combo, etc. We give up a few things running Cryptic in the list, but I think we gain much much more.
I've been testing all day today this list:
I played about 4 games back-to-back against Tron variants. It beat GR Tron, GW Tron, Eldrazi Tron (close games, not easy matchup), and lost to U-Tron in also a set of close games (really draw dependent, don't want to fall into the control role in this matchup).
Then, played against Naya Bushwacker 3 times, losing twice and winning once. The sideboard plays a huge role in the success of the deck, as well as having a large quantity of cheap counters and removal spells in hand. It's important to mulligan aggressively in this matchup. You really need T1 Bolt/Push/Snare, T2 2 of these spells and T3 Snap into one of the spells. That is how I won most of the games. I lost most of the games by keeping land-heavy, low interaction hands. Also, every single life point matters. Minimize life loss with smart play as much as possible, no room for error, similar to Burn. TLDR: Against Bushwacker: MULLIGAN AGGRESSIVELY, CONSERVE LIFE TOTAL.
Notes about the current list:
-Haven't tested 1 Logic Knot in the place of 1 Mana Leak. Trying to get some more consistent results before adding spice.
-Earlier builds had less Thought Scour, and I missed the 4th copy. Definitely enjoying going back to up to 4 (thanks 9tailz for the suggestion!)
-Cut down to 21 lands. Don't miss the 22nd last whatsoever.
-Cut down to 3 Cryptic Command. Don't miss the 4th copy too much. You tend to only really need 1-2 in the grindy games to close out a game.
-Removed Surgical Extraction from the SB and haven't missed them at all. There were some win-more moments where I was able to discard an Ad Nauseam and then extract it, but I think playing the discard/counter game is much stronger against Ad Nauseam, Grishoalbrand, UR Storm, and other GY based decks. Dredge still is and will always be an issue, and I'd rather run more Anger of the Gods for that matchup rather than Surgical.
-Considering removing 1 Engineered Explosives and adding a second Anger of the Gods, but I like how EE is really good in the Death's Shadow Jund matchup as well as hard to interact matchups like Boggles.
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I played the 3 scour 3 ancestral 3 delver list, and it was great.
Beat taking turns, burn, eldrazi tron and goryo.
I got a chance to test kalitas in burn. Casted him at 7 life, tapped out and opponent had one card in hand. Could have been boros and draw a burn spell, but he didn't and you can imagine kalitas took over. Pretty high risk high reward in that matchup. Unless they have the path then its just bad. lol.
I had the complete opposite results haha. It was a small sample size, but I just wanted to test it in a Modern Competitive League, and while I will put some of the losses to variance and bad mulligans, I did only go 2-3. I also took the deck to my local tourney and went 1-1-1, losing to Grixis Delver, drawing against Jeskai Nahiri, and beating Lantern Control.
For Jund, I just take out the Delvers to put more grindy cards. But for Abzan, I have a lot of trouble to find space to board out because Delver is actually very good against Lingering Soul's tokens.
What I board in: Izzet Staticaster, Painful Truths, Desolated Lighthouse.
T1: Play Delver
T2: Delver flips. Cast Hands of Binding on their creature(taps it) encode it and attack with Delver dealing combat damage to tap down another creature(if any). Those two creatures won't untap on opp's turn.
T3: Delver connects but this time he can only keep locking one down.
The good part about this spell is the continuing free portion of it when you keep connecting. I know killing or countering is better but I could see some potential using this.
GURB Grixis/Jund Shadow
RBG Dredge
xUx U Ballista Tron
Commander
GUR Maelstrom Wanderer
BWU Sydri, Galvanic Genius
BGB Meren of Clan Nel Toth
WGW Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith
RRR Feldon of the Third Path
WWW Heliod, God of the Sun
Hey my bad for late reply. If you can't wait and wanna check out my lists, they are on previous pages! They are all fairly similar. I ran paradox' suggested list last time, which ran 3 Scour, 3 delver and 3 ancestral. I personally might make the switch back to moving ancestral to sb. I will update this post in a bit with the most recent list!
I was thinking about the pros and cons of running MB Delver and AV, and was kind of put off by the fact that there's a lot of Tron and other rampy decks at my LGS. But the more I think about it, I wonder if that's actually an OK time to run AV. You generally win by 1) landing an early threat, and then 2) having more answers than they have threats. I feel like the deferred payoff of AV is a big mark against it since you need to keep yourself stable until turn 5 at earliest to get anything out of it, but refilling after leaking/squalling/maybe cryptic-ing their first few threats may make up for it.
Thoughts?
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
So I was actually gonna say, I might be the only one who does this, but I keep delvers in and bring in ancestral against tron. I've had both in my opener, and I usually drop delver first. It's been great so far.
I feel AVs are currently stronger in the sideboard, but that's just my opinion and more of a statement to the overall meta rather than a hard fact. I've been having far more success without AV in the mainboard, as there are some matchups that are really very fast these days that AV is a huge liability. Naya Bushwacker is picking up lots of steam and they can go off as early as Turn 2 and if you don't have Spell Snare, it quickly becomes damage control where a T1 Ancestral is basically dead (whereas at least Delver can block).
The deck is pretty nuts and they go so wide that they really tax our single-target removal spells. The difference with Bushwacker vs Affinity is that Affinity has key powerhouses (Plating, Ravager, Overseer) where Bushwacker has a bunch of creatures that are all relatively equal in power and can go so wide. I'm having a hard time dealing with the deck and I don't know how to be prepared for it without taking away too much from other matchups (MB and SB). Probably need more early counters (Mana Leak, Spell Snare). After my next video series is out I'll need to do even more tuning to stay ahead of the meta.
I've been on 3 Cryptic, 4 Leak, and 2-3 Snare maindeck (depending on if I'm going 2 or 3 Kommand) plus usually 3ish more in the board (Dispel, Squall, etc.) and it's been a huge help. I'm not the best at reading when it's right to hold up for counters vs. build my board vs. cantrip, but even so they've done a ton of work for me.
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
It's becoming really tough for Delver in a format in which the most powerful decks are those that are gaining the ability to go super wide as well as super high (Eldrazi Tron/Tron).
I haven't seen a lot of the Bushwhacker deck locally but I expect to see more of it because it's extremely cheap compared to a lot of Modern decks. Hell, I already have a lot of the cards from drafts/packs so I really just need some of the lands and the Goblin Guides. Anger of the Gods or Engineered Explosives is the way to go. The deck has a lot of "nut" hands compared to most decks I've seen.
I haven't tested it, but I like the sound of (3-3-3 Cryptic Command-Mana Leak-Spell Snare) as the counterspell suite, with 21-22 lands. I also have really been liking 3 Kolaghan's Command in almost all of my builds, but that's because the builds tend to lean towards being more controlling. Definitely need to play around with the numbers and see what feels good. I also have been liking 3 counters in the SB in the form of 2 Dispel/1 Negate (sometimes Countersquall, depends on if I'm worried about the double-black in 1 turn issues) so I think we're more or less on the same page.
The thing with the online meta is that it can sometimes be extremely different than the paper meta. There's a lot of decks that are really easy to test out in MODO than to gather the paper pieces and play it in person. But I've seen a big uptick in a lot of Eldrazi variants, Bushwacker, GB Snek, and Death's Shadow Jund going up in the MTGO meta, and that may translate into paper meta during the next few big events. I'm currently on Anger of the Gods + Damnation as my sweepers of choice, but I may move back to Engineered Explosives. It just feels too slow sometimes, but you could get the same issue with Damnation so I'm not sure which is currently better positioned. And yes, the deck does have a pretty consistent "nut" draw. You'll see a good amount of them in my upcoming video series, unfortunately!
My experience is from playing Cockatrice (I can't be assed to spend $800 on the same cards twice, I'd rather have duals
Anecdotally, GB Snek and Bushwacker just tear us up. I've won vs GB Snek and Bushwacker only a handful of times (maybe 25%?) and they're hard to interact with, especially Snek, where every card is a must answer and we lack the exile effects to make them lose out on thopter tokens and the like. I realize that Engineered Explosives is slow but it's the best wide ranging answer, only next to Anger of the Gods of which I've put 1 in my sideboard. Might need to be 2, who knows.
All I know is that I feel the deck is getting to the point where it's stretched extremely thin in trying to deal with these decks that happen to have perfect counters to our deck. Snek taxes our threats, Bushwhacker taxes our answers, and Eldrazi Tron just goes over us.
One thing's for certain - people who complain Standard isn't adding to Modern are barking up the wrong tree. Snek and Bushwhacker are only viable because of Aether Revolt. And on the bright side, I'm having a lot of fun with playing with Cryptic Command!
What's great about the second approach, which is the slightly higher land count and Cryptic Command is that Cryptic lets us do something very interesting, which is largely ignore what our opponent is doing via the tap all creatures mode, bounce target permanent mode, or counter target spell mode. It's an extremely versatile card in an extremely open meta that has game against lots of decks. The issue is surviving to cast the card. We can do that vs. half of the meta, but the other half will give us trouble, which is why I think we need to tune the deck to handle the early game in order to take advantage of our cheap threats and powerful top ends (K-Command + Cryptic + Snapcaster). This may sound a lot like what Grixis Control is trying to do, but we can also play the tempo game in the form of Delver of Secrets against Eldrazi, Tron, combo, etc. We give up a few things running Cryptic in the list, but I think we gain much much more.
I've been testing all day today this list:
I played about 4 games back-to-back against Tron variants. It beat GR Tron, GW Tron, Eldrazi Tron (close games, not easy matchup), and lost to U-Tron in also a set of close games (really draw dependent, don't want to fall into the control role in this matchup).
Then, played against Naya Bushwacker 3 times, losing twice and winning once. The sideboard plays a huge role in the success of the deck, as well as having a large quantity of cheap counters and removal spells in hand. It's important to mulligan aggressively in this matchup. You really need T1 Bolt/Push/Snare, T2 2 of these spells and T3 Snap into one of the spells. That is how I won most of the games. I lost most of the games by keeping land-heavy, low interaction hands. Also, every single life point matters. Minimize life loss with smart play as much as possible, no room for error, similar to Burn. TLDR: Against Bushwacker: MULLIGAN AGGRESSIVELY, CONSERVE LIFE TOTAL.
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Snapcaster Mage
3 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
Instants/Sorceries (28):
4 Serum Visions
4 Thought Scour
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Fatal Push
2 Terminate
3 Spell Snare
3 Mana Leak
3 Cryptic Command
3 Kolaghan's Command
1 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Darkslick Shores
1 Spirebluff Canal
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Polluted Delta
3 Island
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
2 Steam Vents
2 Watery Grave
1 Blood Crypt
3 Fulminator Mage
1 Ceremonious Rejection
2 Collective Brutality
2 Dispel
1 Negate
3 Ancestral Vision
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Izzet Staticaster
Notes about the current list:
-Haven't tested 1 Logic Knot in the place of 1 Mana Leak. Trying to get some more consistent results before adding spice.
-Earlier builds had less Thought Scour, and I missed the 4th copy. Definitely enjoying going back to up to 4 (thanks 9tailz for the suggestion!)
-Cut down to 21 lands. Don't miss the 22nd last whatsoever.
-Cut down to 3 Cryptic Command. Don't miss the 4th copy too much. You tend to only really need 1-2 in the grindy games to close out a game.
-Removed Surgical Extraction from the SB and haven't missed them at all. There were some win-more moments where I was able to discard an Ad Nauseam and then extract it, but I think playing the discard/counter game is much stronger against Ad Nauseam, Grishoalbrand, UR Storm, and other GY based decks. Dredge still is and will always be an issue, and I'd rather run more Anger of the Gods for that matchup rather than Surgical.
-Considering removing 1 Engineered Explosives and adding a second Anger of the Gods, but I like how EE is really good in the Death's Shadow Jund matchup as well as hard to interact matchups like Boggles.