1. I actually started with 18 lands, but found 19 was best for emptying hand with Courier, ensuring I hit early land drops, and enabling sideboard plans. Looting prevents flood.
2. FB for a 4th Denial I guess, but I don't miss mainboard Leaks at all. 6 permission post-side is plenty. Bomat also happens to be insane against linear combo since they skimp on removal and don't block.
3. Yes, often; against midrange and control.
4. I've played in I think a single Comp REL tournament since the Classic. I still go to weeklies at Pandemonium twice a week and play online a lot via free clients (still haven't figured out how to set up MODO on my Mac).
Thanks for the response. I watched a Legacy video of Mengucci playing Grixis Delver with Bomat to get a feel for it, and it seemed good, although it ate removal. But that's a fine thing in a deck trying to grow a big Goyf or power out a Mandrills.
1. Interesting consideration. I've hated Mountain in various forms of this deck since I started playing RUG a while ago, and it's such a feelbad to have it as your only land in an otherwise-keepable opener. Though being able to cast Bomat off any land probably makes it way more palatable.
2. Six permission seems a bit low against combo decks, but with as many cards as this deck sees, maybe it's fine. I'm particularly worried about this point because my local place is infested with Storm and Ironworks, so much so that I've been running 2 Damping Sphere out of the board to give those decks a speedbump.
3. The local area seems like on control here, and midrange seems really focused on Mardu and a splashing of Bant Eldrazi / Eldrazi Tron. The Mardu matchup feels great with the sweepers and Mandrills, and Huntmaster sucks with sweepers. I'm really excited to try out Hazoret here, but I might just forgo the Huntmasters because so often when I want them in, I also want sweepers.
4. The other big player locally is Burn. What's your plan against Burn with this configuration? I know you mentioned Revelry in the article, but that seems pretty loose if they're not on Bridge.
5. Just a thought, but Bomat might be a little better online because it's pretty easy to find out what's under it when you crack a fetch, whereas doing the same thing in paper would amount to slowplay. I guess if you were looking for something specific, like a Dismember or counter, you could figure it out quickly enough while you're grabbing your Island or whatever.
6. Dumb question for everyone, but has your paper deck got any cool editions? Foiled out, or Beta Bolts, Invocation Blood Moons?
I can't say I'm pleased to see you and must warn you I may have to do something about it.
EDH: UGEdric
Pauper: URDelver
Modern: UGRDelver
Draft my cube: Eric's 390 Unpowered
Been away from Modern for a while now obsessing over commander/pauper. Obviously I’ve missed a ton of discussion about the recent direction of the deck but one thing in particular stood out to me, can someone convince me of Damping Sphere and Alpine Moon here? I understand the Hardened Scales Affinty, Storm, and KCI lists hate to see a sphere but I can’t help but think in a deck with Snapcaster there are better options as those arnt particularly scary matchups IMO. In regards to Alpine, I could see it in lists that can’t support Blood Moon but I genuinely don’t see it having a ton of value here. Can somebody fill me in?
3. The local area seems like on control here, and midrange seems really focused on Mardu and a splashing of Bant Eldrazi / Eldrazi Tron. The Mardu matchup feels great with the sweepers and Mandrills, and Huntmaster sucks with sweepers. I'm really excited to try out Hazoret here, but I might just forgo the Huntmasters because so often when I want them in, I also want sweepers.
4. The other big player locally is Burn. What's your plan against Burn with this configuration? I know you mentioned Revelry in the article, but that seems pretty loose if they're not on Bridge.
5. Just a thought, but Bomat might be a little better online because it's pretty easy to find out what's under it when you crack a fetch, whereas doing the same thing in paper would amount to slowplay. I guess if you were looking for something specific, like a Dismember or counter, you could figure it out quickly enough while you're grabbing your Island or whatever.
3. HM and sweepers don't actually clash. If you have HM on board you will just eat all the tokens with it anyway until they remove it and then your sweeper can take out whatever board they've made. I have written an article about accepting this sort of on-paper tension.
4. We have a lot of Goyfs and plenty of basics. Denial great too. Haven't had any trouble against this deck or I'd play a Feed. I know Chaughey runs them because there's a lot of Burn online and it's basically just free wins in that matchup.
5. You just check for whatever's important in the matchup or game. I have found this aspect of fetchlands to be vastly overrated with Bomat, even by me at first. It's almost certainly wrong to include more fetches for the purpose of getting more looks at Bomat cards, for instance.
Been away from Modern for a while now obsessing over commander/pauper. Obviously I’ve missed a ton of discussion about the recent direction of the deck but one thing in particular stood out to me, can someone convince me of Damping Sphere and Alpine Moon here? I understand the Hardened Scales Affinty, Storm, and KCI lists hate to see a sphere but I can’t help but think in a deck with Snapcaster there are better options as those arnt particularly scary matchups IMO. In regards to Alpine, I could see it in lists that can’t support Blood Moon but I genuinely don’t see it having a ton of value here. Can somebody fill me in?
Modern is much faster than it was even half a year ago. There are more synergistic aggro-combo decks that attack from multiple angles to generate huge amounts of pressure through surgical hate cards, like BridgeVine and Hollow One, and better pure combo decks, like Ironworks and Mono-Green Tron. All these strategies work to exclude slow-and-fair midrange decks like Jund from the format.
Damping Sphere and Alpine Moon are better against the faster decks because they're cheaper; even an on-curve Moon won't race some Tron hands on the draw. Sphere has additional applications against most walks of combo, including Storm, which Moon does not affect.
The reason to play Moon is to gain points against the slower midrange decks as well. But since those decks are on the downswing (other than Mardu, which is hardly affected by Moon and even runs the card itself), Chaughey and others have opted for less flexible but more efficient combo hate.
the card itself really isn't worth the card board its printed on...does it serve a purpose? Sure its a blue 1 drop that might not be a 1/1. I would not put it in a list and expect to win a PTQ or GP though.
I see what you mean by Moon being less relevant now because less GB/x but the best deck is humans, a five color city of brass reliant deck that, combined with artifact hate for vial, gets completely wrecked by Blood Moon. Alpine is better against Tron but Tron is significantly better of a matchup than Eldrazi, where Moon can lock out games and outside of Eldrazi Temple and Tron lands Alpine isn’t very effective while Moon has a ton of (albeit less popular now) applications and generally against poor matchups. One mana is one mana though so I’ll have to try it out.
Damping I just can’t get behind. Trying to cast cantrips behind that thing feels like a complete hose and I’m frankly not sure if any matchups where you need sphere are actually bad enough to justify sideboard slots. There all pretty solid.
Anyways, I started a new league today to shake some rust and started 3-0 so that’s nice.
Here’s my list finding inspiration from the recent discussions here:
Pretty similar to what I’ve run being fairly counter heavy game one but the sideboard is very flexible and I go without delver/pyro to bring in Anger quite often. I like that pyromancer gives us a proactive two threat that ignores grave hate, which has been my primary focus in tweaking as it’s always been a major flaw in the deck.
Faithless looting has been good and I’ve played it before but I’m not sure we can afford to be -1 cards that often. 4 is a lot, drawing two early can certainly feel like a mull to 5 that cost you mana as we have no cards that gain value from being pitched.
Also, there’s something about elemental tokens that make me want to slam a Rancor on them but I’m not sure if that’s worth a slot it’s pretty do nothing at times
Damping I just can’t get behind. Trying to cast cantrips behind that thing feels like a complete hose and I’m frankly not sure if any matchups where you need sphere are actually bad enough to justify sideboard slots. There all pretty solid.
it's very useful to have hate for tron, amulet, kci and storm at the same time. Combo are stronger than they seem and permissions aren't enough.
Faithless looting has been good and I’ve played it before but I’m not sure we can afford to be -1 cards that often. 4 is a lot, drawing two early can certainly feel like a mull to 5 that cost you mana as we have no cards that gain value from being pitched.
I feel looting one of the most wanted card in the deck. Once you build it to function with 3 lands you have plenty of dead cards to pitch since usually we need either removal or counters, rarely both, and card disadvantage doesn't matter any more. It helps looking for the cards you need. Many times it drew me the bolt to steal the game or grew me the gy to cast mandrills earlier. It can be a way to mull even mid game and that's priceless. And in case of need you can always flash it back.
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Decks played: Modern:
0 Affinity;
URG Delver
URGW Countercats
(Here you can find some video contents about Countercats and Temur Delver decks)
Pretty similar to what I’ve run being fairly counter heavy game one but the sideboard is very flexible and I go without delver/pyro to bring in Anger quite often. I like that pyromancer gives us a proactive two threat that ignores grave hate, which has been my primary focus in tweaking as it’s always been a major flaw in the deck.
Faithless looting has been good and I’ve played it before but I’m not sure we can afford to be -1 cards that often. 4 is a lot, drawing two early can certainly feel like a mull to 5 that cost you mana as we have no cards that gain value from being pitched.
My problem with Pyromancer stems back to my playing UR Delver, and it just felt gutless as a threat. Plus, it's not really a 2 drop in that it dies to literally every removal spell, from Hero's Downfall all the way down to Flame Jab and Darkblast, with no value if you just slam it on turn 2, or as a topdeck. Goyf is at least difficult to kill, and Mandrills dodges much of the removal in the format. If there were more free spells in Modern, I'd like Pyromancer a lot more.
As I'm able to detail, perhaps the Bomat Couriers Jordan has suggested might be that missing threat that ignores the yard.
With regard to Faithless Looting, I'm loving it. It took some adjustment to my play style, but insofar as it digs for cards, it's awesome, and even casting it with one other card in hand seems fine to me much of the time. Think about how often you've got an extra land you don't need, or an Abrade in want of a target, or a counter against an Aether Vial deck turn 1. Plus, it digs as efficiently as anything in this format not named Ancient Stirrings for sideboard cards. I've become a huge fan, whereas I think Thought Scour is utter garbo, and would go to great lengths to exclude it from any future decklist unless I was playing Disrupting Shoal and needed another blue card.
Just back from Modern Monday. I was short 2 Baubles, but ended up playing 58 of Jordan's 60 tonight. Bomat felt awesome. The chip damage is real, and being able to reload 2 or 3 cards is real. Wasn't a huge fan of the Mutagenics, but I'll probably keep one in as a way to empty the hand. As it was, being able to dump irrelevant cards for potentially relevant ones felt very good.
I came in 3rd, going 2-1-1 tonight. Lost to Humans 2-1, beat Mardu Pyromancer 2-0, beat Bant Spirits 2-1, and went 1-1-1 in a really frustrating match against UW Spirits.
Here was something awesome that happened when I was down 0-1 against UW Spirits. My board is Island, Forest, 2 shocks, and a Blood Moon. His board is 2 Islands, two other lands, a tapped Vial on 2, and an untapped Vial on 3. His creatures include a just-cast Kira, a Spell Queller with a Huntmaster under it, two Mausoleum Wanderers, a Supreme Phantom giving all his stuff +1/+1, and a Phantasmal Image copying the Phantom. He's trying to get me to concede after attacking me down to 2, and I said I was going to play it out. So I untap, cast Vapor Snag on the Image, which he has to sac. He called a judge to make sure Kira didn't counteract that. Followed that up with a Firespout, getting his Kira, Phantom, and both Wanderers, with just the Queller left. I pass, he attacks me to 2 and passes. I untap, Bolt the Queller, get my Huntmaster back, go to 4, and with a Vapor Snag in hand was able to flip Huntmaster for my next turn and never looked back.
We ended up going to turns on turn 2 of the 3rd game. I kept a hand of all removal knowing that I was out of time and wasn't going to be able to kill him, so was playing for a draw, figuring he wouldn't have time to kill me, either. I killed much of his stuff and he pissed and moaned after the match was over, if only he had done X, he would've won game 2, and if only he'd done Y, he would've won game 3. Yes, but you did not. That's why we play the games. He's some Legacy hotshot from the area who fancies himself a great player and he came into our match upset because he was 1-2. He couldn't bear to give me credit for anything and said his misplays gave me the win, and I called him graceless and bailed. My god do I hate whiners.
It was refreshing to play against all creature decks tonight. Bomat felt especially great one game where I blocked, sacrificed it, pitched a land from my hand and drew a land, Delver, and Bolt. Blood Moon absolutely crapped on Bant Spirits in game 3 when he tapped out on turn 2 for a Supreme Phantom.
In other news, Reflector Mage is an absolute beating and while I finally won a game against Humans, I've still never won a match against the deck in 5 or 6 matches. Seems like you either have to flip 2 Delvers early and Bolt everything they play, or keep a hand of all removal and sweepers and play like a bad control deck. I'm sure this matchup is winnable, but I haven't figured it out yet. Mardu Pyromancer, on the other hand, feels like a bye.
I can't say I'm pleased to see you and must warn you I may have to do something about it.
EDH: UGEdric
Pauper: URDelver
Modern: UGRDelver
Draft my cube: Eric's 390 Unpowered
That is a pretty big list of decks that sphere can either be very similar to blood moon or literally shuts down the combo. I guess I’ll have to try it out too, then.
I definitely understand how powerful the card selection is, but having two lootings in your opening hand and your opponent opening with thought seize means casting a mandrills on turn two following a double faithless looting leaves you with two cards in hand. They’ll likely be good ones but I’m not sure if that’s where I want to be in this format. I’m just saying there has never once been a deck that’s found real sustained success in modern with 4 looting UNLESS that deck also took serious advantage of the discard aspect of the card which we don’t do at all. Game 1 pitching bad cards in the matchup makes sense. Game 2 and 3 you literally shouldn’t have cards in the deck that you would consider bad in the matchup so any non land you pitch is a quality spell. Of course nothing is sweeter when flooding that pitching two lands but these lists are super lean with lands and you’re more likely to be digging for lands than you are pitching them. I’m not saying it’s wrong to include them but alongside bounce spells that’s a whole lot of negative card advantage to be naturally built into a tempo deck.
I’m going to try something more experimental going forward after a few leagues got my wheels turning. Hoping for some feedback.
I liked the idea of Pyromancer giving us a proactive threat that ignores grave hate but felt that our deck wasn’t the best at abusing him. Manamorphose makes him fantastic while being great fuel for mandrills and provides a built in way to manafix post blood moon. It’s not gitaxian Probe but a free cantrip is really really good in this deck. 2 mandrills isn’t very many but traverse makes them easy to find and I’ve found in the past that 2 mandrills and 1 bedlam Reveler can coexist in the same 60 and Manamorphose is the perfect card to fuel him as well. It’s possible I only need one snap here in which case I would probably go back to 3 mandrills. This list probably doesn’t have room for faithless looting but I’m excited about the direction regardless. I feel like there’s potential here.
2 looting in hand AND opponents TS is a pretty rare combination in current meta. In that case you could pitch one looting to the other effectively choosing which cards to mulligan and having the flashback available for later. You could replace more easily the card they took.
Card disadvantage is not the problem these days imho if we manage to play the real tempo game (both bomat and hierarch from Jordan's and Chaughey's lists go to that direction). In any case looting brought the deck to need 18-19 lands. That means you don't have to worry spending a turn to look for a land (either with cantrips or traverse) and just develop your plan.
About your new list: I thought about manamorphose some time ago picking the idea from traverse shadow decks, but never managed to think about a good list for us. I couldn't figure out how to compensate the fact that you have to tap for two mana even if most of our spells cost 1.
I'd replace 2 scours 2 baubles for lootings and a traverse for a land if you would like to give looting another chance.
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Decks played: Modern:
0 Affinity;
URG Delver
URGW Countercats
(Here you can find some video contents about Countercats and Temur Delver decks)
@Lemonbuster and Mikefon's Looting discussion: In my experience so far, pitching Looting to another Looting is good if you are worried about having too few cards left over. I'm actually trying going down to 3 Looting to reduce Looting flood. The worst scenario I've found is when you Loot and end up drawing another Looting after the first resolved (on your next turn for example). You can definitely end up with too many Lootings, but I have liked it a lot. I'm a little hesitant to cut any, but I'm willing to try trimming one. Sometimes I just wish a Looting in hand was a piece of interaction.
I moved the sideboard Snapcaster to the main. Snap has a similar place on curve to Looting, although it doesn't dig for lands in a pinch. It also is objectively powerful, and is a versatile piece of interaction. Snapcaster off the top is similar to Looting when you need one last Bolt or counter, so on that front, I think it'll do just fine. Having 19 lands has been great, and I imagine it'll be pretty easy to support both Snapcasters even when trying to be aggressive (against decks like Tron for example where I would board out the second Snapcaster when I had fewer lands. Being able to Loot away bad Snapcasters is definitely relevant as well).
Mana Leak took the sideboard slot left vacant because it comes in against Control and Combo, matchups in which I have Snags and Dismember to board out and need something to replace them. On that note, I could see switching the second Damping Sphere to a second Alpine Moon if I can handle enough cards to board in for Storm. Dismember is passable, so I might just board in 1 Sphere, Leak, and EE for the 3 Snags with that change.
I could also see dropping Scour to keep all 4 Looting if I miss it. Cutting the third Pyromancer is also on the table, but I am a fan of having threats.
Notably, I am down to 25 cards that transform Delver in the main. I honestly doubt it's an issue. I'd rather be a little less likely to come sprinting out of the gate if it means I am more likely to hit early land drops. The paradigm shift makes me appreciate Todd Anderson's more midrangey aggro-control looking lists, although I prefer a much lower curve.
Notably, I am down to 25 cards that transform Delver in the main. I honestly doubt it's an issue. I'd rather be a little less likely to come sprinting out of the gate if it means I am more likely to hit early land drops. The paradigm shift makes me appreciate Todd Anderson's more midrangey aggro-control looking lists, although I prefer a much lower curve.
I too doubt you'll have much of an issue flipping Delver but it's definitely something to keep an eye on. On another note, I'm also seeing how 2 Snapcasters in the mainboard do, but so far tiago is making me want to drop Mana Leak from the list and run only 1cmc couners here. I should mention that I'm still on 18 lands, I'm guessing the 19th land helps?
I can see merit to not having Mana Leak. Topping off your curve with Snap/2-drop + 1cmc spell is kind of nice. I think I still want some Leak because it is so versatile. There are definitely matchups in which counters are bad (and when they are bad, Leak is usually the worst. Although, it is definitely the best one against Humans when they don't have Vial out), but they are still fantastic against plenty of decks.
I have liked the 19th land. It makes hitting your first 3 land drops easier, and that is roughly where our curve tops out. It makes more Snapcasters easier to handle because you are less likely to get stuck on 2 lands.
Mnesci, could you elaborate on your split of pierce and stubbs? It seems that Denial is better almost all the time as you have 7 ferocious beaters. This deck used to play 4 negate effects which I like a lot, but do you ever feel that is too many?
So yeah, Manamorphose isn’t very good here. There are times where you load up on elementals or it can lead to more turn two mandrills but those are less often than the times when you’re topdecking and forced to use the Manamorphose without knowing if you’ll have anything to use the mana on which can make it hard to hold up mana for interaction. There’s generally a lot of chances to cycle it for free without much consequence but it wasn’t very impactful so I don’t see it worth taking slots without a true payoff card like Thing in the Ice. Oh well.
My Denial/Pierce split was inspired by one of Chaughey's lists. Denial is usually better, but Pierce is a lot better when you only threat is a Pyromancer, especially if you want to protect it. I could see going towards more Denials though.
For what it's worth, I'm on a 2-2 split of Denial and Pierce right now, too. I could see playing a different split pretty easily, or even going with a set of Denials.
I'm on Jordan's Bomat list, and have found myself grudgingly liking 19 lands, but I am no fan of basic Mountain. I might make it an 11th fetch, or possibly a 2nd Spirebluff.
Anyone else struggle mightily against Humans? I feel pretty good against most other decks, like if I just mulligan, sideboard, and sequence intelligently, I'll stand a chance. But Humans feels daunting most games to me. I always board in sweepers, but over the last 8 months, I've tried boarding in extra creatures like Huntmaster, I've tried Blood Moons, I've tried Basilisk Collar when I was playing that, I've tried Abrade when I was playing that. I think this week, my plan will be to board out all 4 counters, all 4 Bomats, Mutagenic Growth, and maybe 1 Delver, to add in 1 Ancient Grudge, 1 Destructive Revelry, 1 Engineered Explosives, 2 Firespout, 3 Blood Moon, and 2 Huntmaster. I've never been big on boarding in answers to Vials, but I've also not been having success against the deck and am happy to try new things.
I can't say I'm pleased to see you and must warn you I may have to do something about it.
EDH: UGEdric
Pauper: URDelver
Modern: UGRDelver
Draft my cube: Eric's 390 Unpowered
For what it's worth, I'm on a 2-2 split of Denial and Pierce right now, too. I could see playing a different split pretty easily, or even going with a set of Denials.
I'm on Jordan's Bomat list, and have found myself grudgingly liking 19 lands, but I am no fan of basic Mountain. I might make it an 11th fetch, or possibly a 2nd Spirebluff.
Anyone else struggle mightily against Humans? I feel pretty good against most other decks, like if I just mulligan, sideboard, and sequence intelligently, I'll stand a chance. But Humans feels daunting most games to me. I always board in sweepers, but over the last 8 months, I've tried boarding in extra creatures like Huntmaster, I've tried Blood Moons, I've tried Basilisk Collar when I was playing that, I've tried Abrade when I was playing that. I think this week, my plan will be to board out all 4 counters, all 4 Bomats, Mutagenic Growth, and maybe 1 Delver, to add in 1 Ancient Grudge, 1 Destructive Revelry, 1 Engineered Explosives, 2 Firespout, 3 Blood Moon, and 2 Huntmaster. I've never been big on boarding in answers to Vials, but I've also not been having success against the deck and am happy to try new things.
I find Delver terrible in this matchup. Usually not too tough to seed a couple cards under Bomat, and the draws are great after siding. We basically just want to Jund them. You're crazy for cutting Muta IMO; it gives you free hits and sometimes removal with Bomat, and kills Phantasmal Image for nothing. Critical to blow up their Vials when given the chance or Humans will outpace you. For my plan, see pic attached.
Greetings all. I put in an investment yesterday due to having always wanted to play this deck, and bought the core pieces of those which I did not already own (OG Goyfs, Tarns, etc.). Before I build a solid list, I would like to put a theoretical one of mine up for criticism before ordering the remaining fillers. Looking for advice and mainly pointers on how to build a list that can perform well at competitive events.
Nobody can help you unless you give us more background on your choices. Zero people here are on Nimble, for example, so you will need to explain that one. At a glance, this deck seems pretty outdated to me. Needs Looting and Remand hasn't been good for years.
the card itself really isn't worth the card board its printed on...does it serve a purpose? Sure its a blue 1 drop that might not be a 1/1. I would not put it in a list and expect to win a PTQ or GP though.
I find Delver terrible in this matchup. Usually not too tough to seed a couple cards under Bomat, and the draws are great after siding. We basically just want to Jund them. You're crazy for cutting Muta IMO; it gives you free hits and sometimes removal with Bomat, and kills Phantasmal Image for nothing. Critical to blow up their Vials when given the chance or Humans will outpace you. For my plan, see pic attached.
Super interesting. I guess I have to get used to cutting Delvers sometimes in Modern. When I play UR Delver in Pauper, I do it all the time, but for some reason in this format, I'm reluctant to do it.
Thanks for attaching the pic. Interesting to see that your board has changed a little: two Surgicals replace one each of the 4 drops, and one Sphere replaces a Moon. No surprise: your list a few weeks ago seemed a little short for the combo matchups running around these days, and maybe a little overboard for the Path to Exile or Thoughtseize decks. I find my matchup with the UW and UWR control decks pretty fine, and pretty much the only Rock decks I'm seeing are Mardu, which I feel favored against, especially postboard. My current configuration is pretty similar, except I've given up Sphere entirely in favor of 3 Moons -- the theory being that it just wins some matchups on its own, where Sphere only slows things down a little -- and my gravehate is one Surgical and one Cage, due to Cage also shutting down Collected Company, which decks I seem to play against often. But if I were to see a rise in Hollow One or Vengevine locally, I think I'd cut the Cage for another Surgical, as you do.
With luck, I'll play against Humans again on Monday, and we'll see how a Delverless configuration goes.
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I can't say I'm pleased to see you and must warn you I may have to do something about it.
EDH: UGEdric
Pauper: URDelver
Modern: UGRDelver
Draft my cube: Eric's 390 Unpowered
So has Looting become a necessary part of the deck now? I am assuming it is a replacement for thought scour?
Also, when you say Jund them, I am assuming you want the deck to basically become a GR midrange beats deck
Also, lastly, Bomat Courier...why is he good. I cannot see how he will be anything than a 1/1 that dies to literally everything...what am I missing? Is he good enough to lower Delver flipping chance?
Thanks for attaching the pic. Interesting to see that your board has changed a little: two Surgicals replace one each of the 4 drops, and one Sphere replaces a Moon. No surprise: your list a few weeks ago seemed a little short for the combo matchups running around these days, and maybe a little overboard for the Path to Exile or Thoughtseize decks. I find my matchup with the UW and UWR control decks pretty fine, and pretty much the only Rock decks I'm seeing are Mardu, which I feel favored against, especially postboard. My current configuration is pretty similar, except I've given up Sphere entirely in favor of 3 Moons -- the theory being that it just wins some matchups on its own, where Sphere only slows things down a little -- and my gravehate is one Surgical and one Cage, due to Cage also shutting down Collected Company, which decks I seem to play against often. But if I were to see a rise in Hollow One or Vengevine locally, I think I'd cut the Cage for another Surgical, as you do.
I actually started on 3 Moons but realized I only wanted to board in a pair against lots of decks (Humans, UW, BGx, etc.). The third one was mainly for Tron. Sphere is better there because it's cheaper and diversifies the hate slot, all while having additional applications against other combo decks that don't care about Moon at all (KCI, Storm). Not that those matchups are bad per se, and Surgical helps there too. But if I want the third Moon slot for Tron anyway, I'd rather have an all-around better version. Over Alpine Moon because of flexibility.
Surgicals are for Bridgevine. Cage has a little too much tension with Looting for my taste, and Company is already favored. The artifact seems fine against Bridge/Hollow but I like Surgical better, and Surgical is also sweet against Company decks anyway (stops Witness/exiles all Druids or Viziers so you don't have to worry about the combo/counters persist).
So has Looting become a necessary part of the deck now? I am assuming it is a replacement for thought scour?
Also, when you say Jund them, I am assuming you want the deck to basically become a GR midrange beats deck
Also, lastly, Bomat Courier...why is he good. I cannot see how he will be anything than a 1/1 that dies to literally everything...what am I missing? Is he good enough to lower Delver flipping chance?
the card itself really isn't worth the card board its printed on...does it serve a purpose? Sure its a blue 1 drop that might not be a 1/1. I would not put it in a list and expect to win a PTQ or GP though.
Modern: MONKEY GROW & Amulet Titan
Legacy: RG Lands
EDH: Merieke Ri Berit Esper Good stuff
Thanks for the response. I watched a Legacy video of Mengucci playing Grixis Delver with Bomat to get a feel for it, and it seemed good, although it ate removal. But that's a fine thing in a deck trying to grow a big Goyf or power out a Mandrills.
1. Interesting consideration. I've hated Mountain in various forms of this deck since I started playing RUG a while ago, and it's such a feelbad to have it as your only land in an otherwise-keepable opener. Though being able to cast Bomat off any land probably makes it way more palatable.
2. Six permission seems a bit low against combo decks, but with as many cards as this deck sees, maybe it's fine. I'm particularly worried about this point because my local place is infested with Storm and Ironworks, so much so that I've been running 2 Damping Sphere out of the board to give those decks a speedbump.
3. The local area seems like on control here, and midrange seems really focused on Mardu and a splashing of Bant Eldrazi / Eldrazi Tron. The Mardu matchup feels great with the sweepers and Mandrills, and Huntmaster sucks with sweepers. I'm really excited to try out Hazoret here, but I might just forgo the Huntmasters because so often when I want them in, I also want sweepers.
4. The other big player locally is Burn. What's your plan against Burn with this configuration? I know you mentioned Revelry in the article, but that seems pretty loose if they're not on Bridge.
5. Just a thought, but Bomat might be a little better online because it's pretty easy to find out what's under it when you crack a fetch, whereas doing the same thing in paper would amount to slowplay. I guess if you were looking for something specific, like a Dismember or counter, you could figure it out quickly enough while you're grabbing your Island or whatever.
6. Dumb question for everyone, but has your paper deck got any cool editions? Foiled out, or Beta Bolts, Invocation Blood Moons?
EDH: UGEdric
Pauper: UR Delver
Modern: UGR Delver
Draft my cube: Eric's 390 Unpowered
4. We have a lot of Goyfs and plenty of basics. Denial great too. Haven't had any trouble against this deck or I'd play a Feed. I know Chaughey runs them because there's a lot of Burn online and it's basically just free wins in that matchup.
5. You just check for whatever's important in the matchup or game. I have found this aspect of fetchlands to be vastly overrated with Bomat, even by me at first. It's almost certainly wrong to include more fetches for the purpose of getting more looks at Bomat cards, for instance. Modern is much faster than it was even half a year ago. There are more synergistic aggro-combo decks that attack from multiple angles to generate huge amounts of pressure through surgical hate cards, like BridgeVine and Hollow One, and better pure combo decks, like Ironworks and Mono-Green Tron. All these strategies work to exclude slow-and-fair midrange decks like Jund from the format.
Damping Sphere and Alpine Moon are better against the faster decks because they're cheaper; even an on-curve Moon won't race some Tron hands on the draw. Sphere has additional applications against most walks of combo, including Storm, which Moon does not affect.
The reason to play Moon is to gain points against the slower midrange decks as well. But since those decks are on the downswing (other than Mardu, which is hardly affected by Moon and even runs the card itself), Chaughey and others have opted for less flexible but more efficient combo hate.
Counter-Cat
Colorless Eldrazi Stompy
Damping I just can’t get behind. Trying to cast cantrips behind that thing feels like a complete hose and I’m frankly not sure if any matchups where you need sphere are actually bad enough to justify sideboard slots. There all pretty solid.
Anyways, I started a new league today to shake some rust and started 3-0 so that’s nice.
Here’s my list finding inspiration from the recent discussions here:
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Snapcaster Mage
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Young Pyromancer
3 Hooting Mandrills
Spells:28
2 Mishra's Bauble
1 Faithless Looting
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Serum Visions
2 Spell Snare
3 Stubborn Denial
2 Tarfire
2 Thought Scour
3 Traverse the Ulvenwald
2 Vapor Snag
1 Abrade
2 Mana Leak
1 Breeding Pool
1 Forest
2 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Steam Vents
1 Stomping Ground
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Magus of the Moon
1 Savage Knuckleblade
1 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Basilisk Collar
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Deprive
1 Destructive Revelry
1 Feed the Clan
1 Roast
2 Anger of the Gods
2 Blood Moon
Pretty similar to what I’ve run being fairly counter heavy game one but the sideboard is very flexible and I go without delver/pyro to bring in Anger quite often. I like that pyromancer gives us a proactive two threat that ignores grave hate, which has been my primary focus in tweaking as it’s always been a major flaw in the deck.
Faithless looting has been good and I’ve played it before but I’m not sure we can afford to be -1 cards that often. 4 is a lot, drawing two early can certainly feel like a mull to 5 that cost you mana as we have no cards that gain value from being pitched.
Also, there’s something about elemental tokens that make me want to slam a Rancor on them but I’m not sure if that’s worth a slot it’s pretty do nothing at times
I feel looting one of the most wanted card in the deck. Once you build it to function with 3 lands you have plenty of dead cards to pitch since usually we need either removal or counters, rarely both, and card disadvantage doesn't matter any more. It helps looking for the cards you need. Many times it drew me the bolt to steal the game or grew me the gy to cast mandrills earlier. It can be a way to mull even mid game and that's priceless. And in case of need you can always flash it back.
Modern:
My problem with Pyromancer stems back to my playing UR Delver, and it just felt gutless as a threat. Plus, it's not really a 2 drop in that it dies to literally every removal spell, from Hero's Downfall all the way down to Flame Jab and Darkblast, with no value if you just slam it on turn 2, or as a topdeck. Goyf is at least difficult to kill, and Mandrills dodges much of the removal in the format. If there were more free spells in Modern, I'd like Pyromancer a lot more.
As I'm able to detail, perhaps the Bomat Couriers Jordan has suggested might be that missing threat that ignores the yard.
With regard to Faithless Looting, I'm loving it. It took some adjustment to my play style, but insofar as it digs for cards, it's awesome, and even casting it with one other card in hand seems fine to me much of the time. Think about how often you've got an extra land you don't need, or an Abrade in want of a target, or a counter against an Aether Vial deck turn 1. Plus, it digs as efficiently as anything in this format not named Ancient Stirrings for sideboard cards. I've become a huge fan, whereas I think Thought Scour is utter garbo, and would go to great lengths to exclude it from any future decklist unless I was playing Disrupting Shoal and needed another blue card.
Just back from Modern Monday. I was short 2 Baubles, but ended up playing 58 of Jordan's 60 tonight. Bomat felt awesome. The chip damage is real, and being able to reload 2 or 3 cards is real. Wasn't a huge fan of the Mutagenics, but I'll probably keep one in as a way to empty the hand. As it was, being able to dump irrelevant cards for potentially relevant ones felt very good.
I came in 3rd, going 2-1-1 tonight. Lost to Humans 2-1, beat Mardu Pyromancer 2-0, beat Bant Spirits 2-1, and went 1-1-1 in a really frustrating match against UW Spirits.
Here was something awesome that happened when I was down 0-1 against UW Spirits. My board is Island, Forest, 2 shocks, and a Blood Moon. His board is 2 Islands, two other lands, a tapped Vial on 2, and an untapped Vial on 3. His creatures include a just-cast Kira, a Spell Queller with a Huntmaster under it, two Mausoleum Wanderers, a Supreme Phantom giving all his stuff +1/+1, and a Phantasmal Image copying the Phantom. He's trying to get me to concede after attacking me down to 2, and I said I was going to play it out. So I untap, cast Vapor Snag on the Image, which he has to sac. He called a judge to make sure Kira didn't counteract that. Followed that up with a Firespout, getting his Kira, Phantom, and both Wanderers, with just the Queller left. I pass, he attacks me to 2 and passes. I untap, Bolt the Queller, get my Huntmaster back, go to 4, and with a Vapor Snag in hand was able to flip Huntmaster for my next turn and never looked back.
We ended up going to turns on turn 2 of the 3rd game. I kept a hand of all removal knowing that I was out of time and wasn't going to be able to kill him, so was playing for a draw, figuring he wouldn't have time to kill me, either. I killed much of his stuff and he pissed and moaned after the match was over, if only he had done X, he would've won game 2, and if only he'd done Y, he would've won game 3. Yes, but you did not. That's why we play the games. He's some Legacy hotshot from the area who fancies himself a great player and he came into our match upset because he was 1-2. He couldn't bear to give me credit for anything and said his misplays gave me the win, and I called him graceless and bailed. My god do I hate whiners.
It was refreshing to play against all creature decks tonight. Bomat felt especially great one game where I blocked, sacrificed it, pitched a land from my hand and drew a land, Delver, and Bolt. Blood Moon absolutely crapped on Bant Spirits in game 3 when he tapped out on turn 2 for a Supreme Phantom.
In other news, Reflector Mage is an absolute beating and while I finally won a game against Humans, I've still never won a match against the deck in 5 or 6 matches. Seems like you either have to flip 2 Delvers early and Bolt everything they play, or keep a hand of all removal and sweepers and play like a bad control deck. I'm sure this matchup is winnable, but I haven't figured it out yet. Mardu Pyromancer, on the other hand, feels like a bye.
EDH: UGEdric
Pauper: UR Delver
Modern: UGR Delver
Draft my cube: Eric's 390 Unpowered
That is a pretty big list of decks that sphere can either be very similar to blood moon or literally shuts down the combo. I guess I’ll have to try it out too, then.
I definitely understand how powerful the card selection is, but having two lootings in your opening hand and your opponent opening with thought seize means casting a mandrills on turn two following a double faithless looting leaves you with two cards in hand. They’ll likely be good ones but I’m not sure if that’s where I want to be in this format. I’m just saying there has never once been a deck that’s found real sustained success in modern with 4 looting UNLESS that deck also took serious advantage of the discard aspect of the card which we don’t do at all. Game 1 pitching bad cards in the matchup makes sense. Game 2 and 3 you literally shouldn’t have cards in the deck that you would consider bad in the matchup so any non land you pitch is a quality spell. Of course nothing is sweeter when flooding that pitching two lands but these lists are super lean with lands and you’re more likely to be digging for lands than you are pitching them. I’m not saying it’s wrong to include them but alongside bounce spells that’s a whole lot of negative card advantage to be naturally built into a tempo deck.
I’m going to try something more experimental going forward after a few leagues got my wheels turning. Hoping for some feedback.
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Hooting Mandrills
2 Young Pyromancer
2 Snapcaster Mage
Spells:29
2 Mishra's Bauble
4 Serum Visions
3 Traverse the Ulvenwald
2 Thought Scour
4 Manamorphose
3 Stubborn Denial
1 Spell Snare
2 Mana Leak
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Tarfire
2 Vapor Snag
1 Breeding Pool
1 Forest
2 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Steam Vents
1 Stomping Ground
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Bedlam Reveler
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Basilisk Collar
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Damping Sphere
2 Destructive Revelry
1 Feed the Clan
1 Roast
2 Blood Moon
1 Firespout
I liked the idea of Pyromancer giving us a proactive threat that ignores grave hate but felt that our deck wasn’t the best at abusing him. Manamorphose makes him fantastic while being great fuel for mandrills and provides a built in way to manafix post blood moon. It’s not gitaxian Probe but a free cantrip is really really good in this deck. 2 mandrills isn’t very many but traverse makes them easy to find and I’ve found in the past that 2 mandrills and 1 bedlam Reveler can coexist in the same 60 and Manamorphose is the perfect card to fuel him as well. It’s possible I only need one snap here in which case I would probably go back to 3 mandrills. This list probably doesn’t have room for faithless looting but I’m excited about the direction regardless. I feel like there’s potential here.
Card disadvantage is not the problem these days imho if we manage to play the real tempo game (both bomat and hierarch from Jordan's and Chaughey's lists go to that direction). In any case looting brought the deck to need 18-19 lands. That means you don't have to worry spending a turn to look for a land (either with cantrips or traverse) and just develop your plan.
About your new list: I thought about manamorphose some time ago picking the idea from traverse shadow decks, but never managed to think about a good list for us. I couldn't figure out how to compensate the fact that you have to tap for two mana even if most of our spells cost 1.
I'd replace 2 scours 2 baubles for lootings and a traverse for a land if you would like to give looting another chance.
Modern:
I moved the sideboard Snapcaster to the main. Snap has a similar place on curve to Looting, although it doesn't dig for lands in a pinch. It also is objectively powerful, and is a versatile piece of interaction. Snapcaster off the top is similar to Looting when you need one last Bolt or counter, so on that front, I think it'll do just fine. Having 19 lands has been great, and I imagine it'll be pretty easy to support both Snapcasters even when trying to be aggressive (against decks like Tron for example where I would board out the second Snapcaster when I had fewer lands. Being able to Loot away bad Snapcasters is definitely relevant as well).
Mana Leak took the sideboard slot left vacant because it comes in against Control and Combo, matchups in which I have Snags and Dismember to board out and need something to replace them. On that note, I could see switching the second Damping Sphere to a second Alpine Moon if I can handle enough cards to board in for Storm. Dismember is passable, so I might just board in 1 Sphere, Leak, and EE for the 3 Snags with that change.
I could also see dropping Scour to keep all 4 Looting if I miss it. Cutting the third Pyromancer is also on the table, but I am a fan of having threats.
Notably, I am down to 25 cards that transform Delver in the main. I honestly doubt it's an issue. I'd rather be a little less likely to come sprinting out of the gate if it means I am more likely to hit early land drops. The paradigm shift makes me appreciate Todd Anderson's more midrangey aggro-control looking lists, although I prefer a much lower curve.
4x Tarmogoyf
3x Hooting Mandrills
3x Young Pyromancer
2x Snapcaster Mage
2x Spell Pierce
2x Stubborn Denial
2x Mana Leak
4x Lightning Bolt
1x Tarfire
2x Forked Bolt
3x Vapor Snag
1x Dismember
4x Serum Visions
1x Thought Scour
4x Misty Rainforest
4x Scalding Tarn
2x Wooded Foothills
2x Steam Vents
1x Breeding Pool
1x Stomping Ground
1x Spirebluff Canal
2x Island
1x Forest
1x Mountain
1x Alpine Moon
1x Ancient Grudge
1x Abrade
1x Anger of the Gods
1x Basilisk Collar
1x Ceremonious Rejection
2x Damping Sphere
1x Mana Leak
1x Destructive Revelry
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Feed the Clan
1x Huntmaster of the Fells
Interested in RUG (Temur) Delver in Modern? Find gameplay with live commentary at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8UcKe8jVh1e2N4CHbd3fhg
I have liked the 19th land. It makes hitting your first 3 land drops easier, and that is roughly where our curve tops out. It makes more Snapcasters easier to handle because you are less likely to get stuck on 2 lands.
Interested in RUG (Temur) Delver in Modern? Find gameplay with live commentary at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8UcKe8jVh1e2N4CHbd3fhg
Noob mtgsalvation erased all my account
Interested in RUG (Temur) Delver in Modern? Find gameplay with live commentary at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8UcKe8jVh1e2N4CHbd3fhg
I'm on Jordan's Bomat list, and have found myself grudgingly liking 19 lands, but I am no fan of basic Mountain. I might make it an 11th fetch, or possibly a 2nd Spirebluff.
Anyone else struggle mightily against Humans? I feel pretty good against most other decks, like if I just mulligan, sideboard, and sequence intelligently, I'll stand a chance. But Humans feels daunting most games to me. I always board in sweepers, but over the last 8 months, I've tried boarding in extra creatures like Huntmaster, I've tried Blood Moons, I've tried Basilisk Collar when I was playing that, I've tried Abrade when I was playing that. I think this week, my plan will be to board out all 4 counters, all 4 Bomats, Mutagenic Growth, and maybe 1 Delver, to add in 1 Ancient Grudge, 1 Destructive Revelry, 1 Engineered Explosives, 2 Firespout, 3 Blood Moon, and 2 Huntmaster. I've never been big on boarding in answers to Vials, but I've also not been having success against the deck and am happy to try new things.
1x Breeding Pool
1x Forest
2x Island
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Mountain
3x Scalding Tarn
1x Spirebluff Canal
2x Steam Vents
1x Stomping Ground
3x Wooded Foothills
Sorcery (9)
4x Faithless Looting
1x Forked Bolt
4x Serum Visions
1x Dismember
4x Lightning BoltIT
1x Mutagenic Growth
2x Spell Pierce
2x Stubborn Denial
1x Tarfire
2x Vapor Snag
Creature (15)
4x Bomat Courier
4x Delver of Secrets
3x Hooting Mandrills
4x Tarmogoyf
Artifact (4)
4x Mishra's Bauble
1x Ancient Grudge
3x Blood Moon
1x Destructive Revelry
1x Engineered Explosives
2x Firespout
1x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Hazoret the Fervent
2x Huntmaster of the Fells
2x Mana Leak
1x Surgical Extraction
EDH: UGEdric
Pauper: UR Delver
Modern: UGR Delver
Draft my cube: Eric's 390 Unpowered
Counter-Cat
Colorless Eldrazi Stompy
Super interesting. I guess I have to get used to cutting Delvers sometimes in Modern. When I play UR Delver in Pauper, I do it all the time, but for some reason in this format, I'm reluctant to do it.
Thanks for attaching the pic. Interesting to see that your board has changed a little: two Surgicals replace one each of the 4 drops, and one Sphere replaces a Moon. No surprise: your list a few weeks ago seemed a little short for the combo matchups running around these days, and maybe a little overboard for the Path to Exile or Thoughtseize decks. I find my matchup with the UW and UWR control decks pretty fine, and pretty much the only Rock decks I'm seeing are Mardu, which I feel favored against, especially postboard. My current configuration is pretty similar, except I've given up Sphere entirely in favor of 3 Moons -- the theory being that it just wins some matchups on its own, where Sphere only slows things down a little -- and my gravehate is one Surgical and one Cage, due to Cage also shutting down Collected Company, which decks I seem to play against often. But if I were to see a rise in Hollow One or Vengevine locally, I think I'd cut the Cage for another Surgical, as you do.
With luck, I'll play against Humans again on Monday, and we'll see how a Delverless configuration goes.
EDH: UGEdric
Pauper: UR Delver
Modern: UGR Delver
Draft my cube: Eric's 390 Unpowered
Also, when you say Jund them, I am assuming you want the deck to basically become a GR midrange beats deck
Also, lastly, Bomat Courier...why is he good. I cannot see how he will be anything than a 1/1 that dies to literally everything...what am I missing? Is he good enough to lower Delver flipping chance?
Surgicals are for Bridgevine. Cage has a little too much tension with Looting for my taste, and Company is already favored. The artifact seems fine against Bridge/Hollow but I like Surgical better, and Surgical is also sweet against Company decks anyway (stops Witness/exiles all Druids or Viziers so you don't have to worry about the combo/counters persist). Just read the last few pages of the thread if you have questions about recent builds. 3500 words on Bomat: http://modernnexus.com/new-crackback-introducing-miracle-bo/
Counter-Cat
Colorless Eldrazi Stompy