I'm unsure if the manabase can handle the 2 Tectonic Edge, or if 3 basic lands is enough (might cut a Temple Garden). The Brushlands are there to help with getting mana for the 2 Eldrazi Displacer (That's the only card I run that requires colourless mana.Do I have enough colourless sources?) I am also unsure about the number of Stirring Wildwood, if any at all.
Thank you for the help.
So i'm guessing fastlands are better for the jace/discard version and checklands are good for controlling version (with Cryptic Command.
Also, would cutting down to 22 lands be ok? I'm running 3 Thought Scour, 3 Serum Visions and 2 Ancestral Vision
I think that mostly, we want our CMC 4 walkers to ramp. Garruk Wildspeaker and Xenagos, the Reveler have +1 for ramp and -1 or 0 for creating tokens. In my opinion the versatility of these two planeswalkers is more relevant to our game plan than what Arlinn Kord does. If you want a haste enabler with pump, you might consider Sarkhan Vol (if you're playing Genesis Wave). Arlinn Kord doesn't help us much in terms of what we want our deck to do.
hello, just a quick notice, i do have moderate (not overwhelming, 13-7 right now online in the league, before eldrazi showed up, i had like 66% too, for months) success with this streamlined list.
so if anyone is looking for a starting point for a more traditional delver, here it is. i appreciate if you share your thoughts. feel free to ask anything.
a few remarks:
- i use the abbot not as an aggro creature, more as a source of card advantage, playing him later in the game, sometimes setting draws up with serum visions.
- i really like burst lightning as a secondary burn spell after bolt. the versatility is great and the split 2 burst, 1 forked, 1 electrolyze has been paying off
- i played gut shot instead of forked bolt before the bannings, now i prefer forked bolt as there seem less x/1s that are important on their own in the meta, so i prefer the 2 for 1
- the sideboard moons and the pyros are for a poor mans blue moon. people tend to bring in spot removal against delver builds if they saw swiftspear and abbot, which pyro undermines
- i dont think ancestral vision is a 4 off in this deck. more a 3 off in the board for grindy matchups
- will continue to play this online and at fnms, but in the upcoming pptq season and bigger tournaments i will definitely bring blue moon as my deck of choice. this feels nice, but blue moon is the stronger deck by far.
i ran into a whole lot of brews, so i cant say too much about the machups. well, its mtgo leagues, semicasual...
How has abbot been with the counterspells? It might be a bit awkward flipping a remand off an abbot
Sunday I took this list to a 9th place finish at a 188 persons event. Staring out 0-1-1 and then winning 6 in a row was pretty nice. Of course my bad start gave me even worse breakers and I was the only 6-1-1 to fall out of the top 8. My rounds where as follows:
Esper control: 1-1-1 (0-0-1)
Living end: 0-2 (0-1-1)
Mono white hatebears: 2-0 (1-1-1)
UW control: 2-0 (2-1-1)
Mono white hatebears 2-1 (3-1-1)
BW tokens: 2-1 (4-1-1)
naya zoo: 2-1 (5-1-1)
GR tron: 2-1 (6-1-1)
The list felt great, drawing 4 at the start of turn 5 feels is amazing, and on any other turn aswell for that matter. Not once did it get countered or thoughtsiezed. This did need some help though, but that’s what this list is built for, with ancestral on 1 counter e.o.t clique is the sweetest of plays. No ancestral visions where cast against me neither. Dark dwellers flashed back 3 ancestrals, 2 kolaghan’s commands and 1 kozilek’s return over the course of the tournament, which is obviously amazing. The body is relevant and the did not rot in my hand once. Flashing back a 3-drop with GDD costs as much as doing the same with snapcaster, the difference is not instant speed ofc, but the GDD body is sweet!
As for the spell configuration, I used Gerry Thompson’s philosophy from a few months back that stuck with me: ‘inquisition the cheap spells, then mana leak the expensive ones.’ That’s why leak is in there. I favored leak over remand because there are some bothersome enchantments that we can’t get rid of. Snare is in the list because it hits those exact same enchantments on top of the long list of powerful 2-drops in the format (and the thopter combo aswell). Liliana was awesome. She’s another form of card advantage and a source to trade 1-1 aswell in her +1. Which is great when you want to 1-for-1 and then resolve ancestral.
The manlands where great aswell, never was I screwed not being able to cast spells because of them, and they where pressure when I didnt have ancestral and we where both hellbent.
All this might seem like magical christmas land, but this is what happened.
I couldn’t close out game 1 against esper due to his lingering souls, which caused the draw. Against living end I held a sweet hand game 1, exept that is was not sweet against living end. I had to mull to 5 game 2 because of unkeepable hands, never seeing a leyline either.
Leylines where in there for living end and possible thopter shenannigans. And I might cut them for some Invasive surgeries since scapeshift is on the rise again, and it is gamewinning against living end, all assuming i have delerium ofc, otherwise it’s quite allright still. It also hits lingering souls in a place where it hurts. The thopter matchup might be good already with this configuration, but the combo was not as omnipresent as I had thought it would be at our event.
Anyway: Great deck, would play again.
Have you found Liliana to work well with the counterspells?
Do you think that Thought Scour is still good in this deck? I want to cut 2 for 2 more ancestral visions. Maybe this will mean having to cut one Tasigur, the Golden Fang. However Thought Scour is useful for enabling t2 or 3 tasigur and t3 jace, so i'm not quite sure.
I'm thinking of this so far:
I'm unsure if the manabase can handle the 2 Tectonic Edge, or if 3 basic lands is enough (might cut a Temple Garden). The Brushlands are there to help with getting mana for the 2 Eldrazi Displacer (That's the only card I run that requires colourless mana.Do I have enough colourless sources?) I am also unsure about the number of Stirring Wildwood, if any at all.
Thank you for the help.
ie just for Noble Hierarch, Eternal Witness, Qasali Pridemage and Scavenging Ooze
Also, would cutting down to 22 lands be ok? I'm running 3 Thought Scour, 3 Serum Visions and 2 Ancestral Vision
Also, how many two drops are recommended?
How has abbot been with the counterspells? It might be a bit awkward flipping a remand off an abbot
Have you found Liliana to work well with the counterspells?