Honestly I really like Fallen Shinobi. Perhaps I am way off but I think this card could be amazing in a bug shell. Perhaps he's just better in something like UB Faeries but I'd like to test it. I like to think of it as BUGs Bloodbraid Elf. Imagine the value, 2 free spells, land + something and bouncing your snapcaster.
Haven't posted here in awhile but I've been back on grixis delver for awhile. I took down a recent pptq (47 players) with this deck.
Matchups were as follows.
1: jund 2-1
2: infect 0-2 (only loss played safe and opponent won on turn 2 game 1 on the play and turn 3 game two, just had nut draws)
3: suicide zoo 2-0
4: BW Death and taxes Eldrazi 2-1
5: infect 2-0 (opponent was overall top seed in the Swiss I was his only loss)
6: dredge (we shake hands and draw into 6-7th in top 8)
Round 1: Amero control 2-1 (match took an hour an a half. In game 1 he successfully cast 3 ancestral visions and I still won)
Round 2: infect 2-1 - same guy I beat in the Swiss.
Finals: another Amero control player. 2-1. The key play was me scrying dreadbore to the top and allowing him to resolve his nahiri. He made the mistake of upticking nahiri and discarding a second nahiri. Dreadbore with counter backup took her out and he couldn't recover game 3. Again I won through multiple resolved ancestral visions.
Also, I play a 1 of peek in my deck, that card was a house all tournament long. Passing with a fetch and having the potential to thought scour / spell snare / bolt, or peek is just awesome.
Still fine tuning a list and have been doing lots of testing with the new Liliana (I don't think she's good enough, atleast not in the delver shell.)
Also been heavily testing a varient with goryo's and griselbrand. Still using delve creatures like tasigurs. Very promising results. The griselbrand combo is just one more thing they have to respect. And it's not even so much a win condition as it is just a free swing for a third of their health and draw 7 cards. Refiling your hand for free practically is just insane. It's like firing off double ancestral and nuking the opponent.
I think if you're playing tasigurs you'd cut serums and play scour and ancestral. No tasigurs, cut scours play visions and ancestral. 3/4 split both ways.
I actually think young pyro might be the best threat currently. Ancestral refuel the hand nicely.
A friend of mine has been playing a 1 of Tombstalker instead of the angler, the flying has been really good for him. It's obviously Double black and costs 1 more, but something worth noting for the group here.
That mana base seems really sketchy and kind of greedy when you're trying to land 3 & 4 drops. Also you mention removing Darksteel citadel, but without them Mox opal becomes infinitely worse.
Feels slow with no mana rocks. Also the artifact count is really low with makes tezzerator not great. I see where your ideas are headed. It I'm. Not sure this deck will pan our. It just feels really slow to me, but I obviously haven't tested it. This is just at a glance.
Because the meta Is shifting to aggro in an attempt to beat this unstoppable Eldrazi threat.that means burn, zoo, boggles, infect, affinity are all up in numbers. And chalice on 1 wrecks these decks. Or 0 on affinity if you're on the play.
That being said chalice has like tripled in price. This deck is very expensive to play between bridge chalice damnation and Opal I'd you play it.
I personally hated Jeff's list. I think it just showed a lack of experience wit the deck. His list didn't have enough artifact, and ran odd cards like wurmcoil when using bridge as the wincon. He also has way to much main deck removal in my opinion.
So we finally completed our first locally run Modern League. It was 5 weeks - 2 matched per week. We ended up with 26 registered players. I got first with an 8-2 record. This was my first time really playing the deck outside of gold fishing at home, so overall I am really happy with the results.
My loses were to GR tron - I should have won this match, game two I made a misplay which cost me the game, and game three I played a little more aggressive and he was tapped out, so I spoiled for Ad Naus for the win on upkeep, but I milled 37 cards, all 4 of them were in the bottom 15 or so. Was pretty rough.
My other loss was to a Esper Mentor deck, it was chock full of counters and hand hate, I nearly won in game three but I played a little hastily when I could have waited another turn to have extra mana open for his leak.
At any rate I had a great time and learned a lot about this deck, Also I only had 1 copy of lightning storm so I was playing with a Lab man maindeck, I just got back from GP Vancouver so I was able to pick up the last couple of cards I needed to make the deck really run smooth.
Matchups were as follows.
1: jund 2-1
2: infect 0-2 (only loss played safe and opponent won on turn 2 game 1 on the play and turn 3 game two, just had nut draws)
3: suicide zoo 2-0
4: BW Death and taxes Eldrazi 2-1
5: infect 2-0 (opponent was overall top seed in the Swiss I was his only loss)
6: dredge (we shake hands and draw into 6-7th in top 8)
Round 1: Amero control 2-1 (match took an hour an a half. In game 1 he successfully cast 3 ancestral visions and I still won)
Round 2: infect 2-1 - same guy I beat in the Swiss.
Finals: another Amero control player. 2-1. The key play was me scrying dreadbore to the top and allowing him to resolve his nahiri. He made the mistake of upticking nahiri and discarding a second nahiri. Dreadbore with counter backup took her out and he couldn't recover game 3. Again I won through multiple resolved ancestral visions.
Also, I play a 1 of peek in my deck, that card was a house all tournament long. Passing with a fetch and having the potential to thought scour / spell snare / bolt, or peek is just awesome.
Still fine tuning a list and have been doing lots of testing with the new Liliana (I don't think she's good enough, atleast not in the delver shell.)
Also been heavily testing a varient with goryo's and griselbrand. Still using delve creatures like tasigurs. Very promising results. The griselbrand combo is just one more thing they have to respect. And it's not even so much a win condition as it is just a free swing for a third of their health and draw 7 cards. Refiling your hand for free practically is just insane. It's like firing off double ancestral and nuking the opponent.
I'll try to share the lists later.
I like where this list is going.
I actually think young pyro might be the best threat currently. Ancestral refuel the hand nicely.
That being said chalice has like tripled in price. This deck is very expensive to play between bridge chalice damnation and Opal I'd you play it.
My loses were to GR tron - I should have won this match, game two I made a misplay which cost me the game, and game three I played a little more aggressive and he was tapped out, so I spoiled for Ad Naus for the win on upkeep, but I milled 37 cards, all 4 of them were in the bottom 15 or so. Was pretty rough.
My other loss was to a Esper Mentor deck, it was chock full of counters and hand hate, I nearly won in game three but I played a little hastily when I could have waited another turn to have extra mana open for his leak.
At any rate I had a great time and learned a lot about this deck, Also I only had 1 copy of lightning storm so I was playing with a Lab man maindeck, I just got back from GP Vancouver so I was able to pick up the last couple of cards I needed to make the deck really run smooth.
My other mathces were as follows.
BW Eldrazi 2-0
UB Faeries 2-1
Affinity 2-0
Burn 2-1
Scapeshift x2 (2-1 and 2-0)
Rug Delver 2-1
UW Control 2-0