This is the type of stuff that makes me want to get out of bed in the morning! Thank you for typing all this up and for your insight. I love reading your posts. Like MeraSC said, be careful of getting burned out (not by Burn, you know what I mean).
The reason I don't board in huntmaster is that I do not play huntmaster in the side. I play spreading seas instead. I would bring them in against merfolk if I had them.
Against Merfolk, the games have been really close and I wonder even to myself how I have a positive win rate against them so far.
I always try to make sure I have enough red and green sources in play so that when they spreading seas one of my lands, I will still be able to play my cards. This does mean I take a extra few points of damage fetching and shocking but it is usually worth it.
I board in my Ancient Grudges, Sweepers, and Engineered Explosives while taking out mana leak, a few copies of stubborn denial, and trimming a copy of hooting mandrills, thought scour, and a dismember. My reasoning is that their deck becomes much easier to beat without Aether Vial, so the grudges com in. The sweepers are a no duh! coming in. But as for cards to take out, Mana Leak is too inconsistent. Sure its one of our best answers to Master of Waves, but the chances of them drawing a cavern of souls by turn 4 is pretty high. Stubborn denial isn't completely dead against merfolk, so usually I leave in like 1-2 copies so I can try to win counterspell wars that we get in over removal. And then finally I take out a copy of hooting mandrills and a thought scour. Hooting mandrills is just soo clunky against them. They can mess up our casting it by playing relic of progenitus or bounce it back to our hand with a Harbinger of the tides, vapor snag it back to our hand, etc. So I trim a mandrills because of the clunck factor.
My plan against merfolk is to try and kill everything they play while clocking them with a threat. This is much easier when they don't have an Aether Vial out. Also, I have been noticing that Kozilek's Return is better than Anger of the Gods in this matchup. My opponents have been able to keep me off double red so that I am not even able to cast anger. But kozilek's return has been a blowout at times to their master of waves. One time, my opponent was attacking me with a Kira, the Great Glass spinner and two mutavaults. I cast a Kozilek's Return and the game was just over lol.
TL;DR, try to have as much interaction against merfolk as possible while trimming the clunk during sideboard. Killing their Aether Vials has been a winning strategy for me but I feel like I have been getting lucky to win some of these games.
Hey guys! I have been testing a lot in the Magic Online Two Man Ques and Friendly Leagues. I have been recording my games Wins and Losses into a spreadsheet and I am averaging a 67% match win percentage over 100 games. I plan on uploading the spreadsheet tomorrow as well as writing a tournament report for the tournament I attended this last weekend! (Hint, I made it to the finals!) I think the deck is amazing right now.
There have even been scenarios where I dont have enough Islands in play for my blood moon and I just enchant one of my lands with a spreading seas before I play blood moon and then I have blue mana :D. Instead of trying to go toe-to-toe with the midrange and control decks and try to play a card advantage game (Huntmaster) I just board in the spreading seas and blood moon package and just try to disrupt their mana to make all their card advantage worthless and its been working pretty nicely for me especially against the death's shadow jund decks.
You know how layers work right? You would have to float blue, resolve Moon, then use the blue to enchant your land AFTER Moon resolves, a 5-mana play (unless you are enchanting a basic land with Seas, so exactly Mountain). Six land hate cards seems like a lot but it's great against Shadow.
Also stealing a Shadow can be better than stealing a Goyf in some scenarios.
Allow me to clarify:
Say I have a Spirebluff Canal and a Forest out on turn 2. I cast Spreading seas and target my spirebluff, turning into an island. I play, lets say, a stomping ground on turn 3 and slam a blood moon down. I will then have a stomping ground that is a mountain, a forest, and a spirebluff canal that is now an island. Thats what I was trying to say I was doing.
Edit: Hmmm, I guess I don't know how layering works. All I know is that I have had scenarios where I cast spreading seas on a land and I am able to tap for blue with a blood moon in play. Maybe I cast the spreading seas after the blood moon was in play...
Just an update on a Todd Anderson inspired Temur Delver list that I have been doing pretty well with lately (70% match win rate in the 2 man-ques on Magic Online over 75 games):
Cards that have impressed me:
Cryptic Command:
this card has been a lot better than I thought it would be. It has been able to win games I could not have won otherwise where I tap out their entire team and swing for lethal or secure the final turns against a tron deck. One copy has been working out great in the maindeck.
Spreading Seas:
I saw Todd playing this card in his sideboard and thought it would be even better in combination with Blood Moon. I was not wrong. Opponents sometimes get cute and fetch around a blood moon, but then we can just tag their basics with spreading seas and get them good. (Note this works best against decks not playing Blue) There have even been scenarios where I dont have enough Islands in play for my blood moon and I just enchant one of my lands with a spreading seas before I play blood moon and then I have blue mana :D. Instead of trying to go toe-to-toe with the midrange and control decks and try to play a card advantage game (Huntmaster) I just board in the spreading seas and blood moon package and just try to disrupt their mana to make all their card advantage worthless and its been working pretty nicely for me especially against the death's shadow jund decks.
Natural State:
Being a one-mana destroy target artifact or enchantment has been pretty useful in regards to flashing it back quickly with a snapcaster mage. I like it over destructive revelry because of how cheap it costs to cast.
Izzet Staticaster:
This card has been a blow out against the go-wide decks who can just flood the board with dudes. Is it better or worse than pyroclasm or anger of the gods? I don't know yet. All I know is that the card has been good.
Cards that have dissapointed:
Simic Charm:
I usually end up siding out Simic charm in most of the matchups. Its not an exciting card to have and is usually just a worse version of the other cards in my deck. But the flexibility is nice to have in the main deck and I think the 1st Simic Charm is better than the 3rd Vapor Snag. I am looking for a better card to put in this slot (spell snare? spell pierce?) but am still testing it.
Threads of Disloyalty:
Threads' ceiling is stealing a Tarmogoyf, which is really good for us because we don't have many way other than this to deal with an opposing tarmogoyf. But against non tarmogoyf decks, trying to steal something has always been just a little too slow or just disastrous. (I stole a Jace, Vryn's Prodigy the other day and found out that it goes back under the opponent's control after it transforms) Not sure if it is a better dismember or a worse dismember. Also, if you steal an opponent's death shadow, it will just die if your lifetotal is higher than 13. So just think of it as a 3 mana removal spell for death's shadow and it starts to get less exciting. I haven't been able to steal a goyf yet, but I will be probably going down to 1 Threads of Disloyalty from now on and putting another counterspell in its place.
I am worried about the uptick in Fatal Push that is sure to abound. This deck is at its best when red based removal is king, not when Path or Fatal Push is premium. With the uptick in Death's Shadow, I expect more path to exile, terminates, and Fatal Pushes to be played. Another thing is that if people start shifting to decks/sideboard tech that is good against the hand disruption package the Abzan and Death's Shadow decks present, I sense our deck is in a good position to beat the decks that are trying to next level Abzan and Death's Shadow due to the fact of how good counterspells are in those matchups. I can't help but think now if that people want to play Traverse the Ulvenwald, Death's Shadow is a wayyy better Traverse deck than we are. It might be correct that if you want to play Traverse the Ulvenwald, then just play Death's Shadow because it is easier for them to achieve delirium and they also have better creatures that they are Traversing for.
Here are some of my observations for fighting against Cheerios:
1) They play Silence in the sideboard. Don't think you are safe just because you have a lightning bolt in your hand. They can just place Silence, and if you don't have countermagic for it, you can just die because you can't bolt their enabler.
2) Engineered Explosives is very good against them. Say they land a Puresteel Paladin and start to go off, if you have an Engineered Explosives on zero, just pop it in response to a Retract. This will not work however if they have multiple retracts. Also, EE gets around Silence.
3) Its often better to hold up interaction than just slamming a threat. Try to leave up a bolt or something at all times. This does slow us down but its risky to leave the shields down against this deck.
Just looked through the sideboard guide and I noticed that it says to take Delver out in so many matchups.
Is this just your own personal style? I never remove the Bugman from my main and I don't recall Ashton saying he does this against midrange or any other deck really.
Edit:
Just noticed you run ancestral vision. How's that working?
My reasoning is as follow:
In the grindy matchups where I want to board in both Huntmaster and Ancestral Vision, I have taken a page from Kevin Jones and Ryan Overturf's book and followed their advice of boarding out Delvers against Jeskai, Jund, and Grixis type of decks when you have Ancestral Vision in your sideboard. To quote Kevin Jones: "Sideboarding with Grixis Delver is pretty flexible and oftentimes obvious. Unsurprisingly, the issues lie in the gray areas. Ancestral Vision is often swapped for Delver of Secrets. Jeskai, Grixis Control, Abzan Midrange and possibly Jund are decks where you might seek to win an attrition game instead of a tempo based game. It often depends on play style though, if you think such a plan is overly anticipated by your opponent you can leave the Delvers in and get ’em. I also like doing this when there’s a short amount of time left in the round and am much more likely to do it on the play than on the draw."
Also, the more creatures, enchantments, and artifacts you put in your deck after sideboarding in a given matchups, the worse Delver becomes. Since I am not taking out Hooting Mandrills in these matchups, when I board in Huntmaster and Blood Moon I have to trim instants and sorceries. This just make Delver that much worse because now he is even more unreliable to flip. The deck's composition changes enough after sideboarding in these matchups to the degree where Delver starts to become the worst card in your deck (even if Delver is still a reasonable card). So basically against decks where Tempo'ing them out of the game is just not going to happen, Delver starts to look bad, especially considering when you are taking out instants and sorceries during games 2 and 3.
Ancestral Vision has been working out for me better than Bedlam Reveler has. I am still testing it out. The results are inconclusive.
My qualms with Bedlam Reveler are twofold:
1) Bedlam Reveler has too many hoops you have to jump through in order to make it work. I have found that the set up for him to be awkward and clunky.
2) If you are playing with Bedlam Reveler, you can't have Hooting Mandrills in your deck during games 2 and 3, which in some matchups, you really miss your Mandrills that can't die to Fatal Push.
Also, not to pat y'alls back too much, but congratulations on maintaining a productive and critical thread. After haunting a few others lately, it's become clear how out of the weeds we tend to stay, and how we actually make progress tuning our deck instead of just posting a bunch of unproductive fluff.
Yeah ^ this.
Of those running Traverse, how many copies do y'all run? I run two copies, mostly due to the fact that it can be clunky in multiples and plus delirium is not always active during the game due to the tension between Hooting Mandrills and Traverse. And if you run Traverse in the sideboard, how many copies do you run?
This is the type of stuff that makes me want to get out of bed in the morning! Thank you for typing all this up and for your insight. I love reading your posts. Like MeraSC said, be careful of getting burned out
Current Deck:
4 Hooting Mandrills
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Delver of Secrets
3 Snapcaster Mage
Sorceries (5)
4 Serum Visions
1 Forked Bolt
Instants (21)
1 Tarfire
1 Cryptic Command
1 Dismember
2 Spell Snare
2 Vapor Snag
3 Mana Leak
3 Stubborn Denial
4 Thought Scour
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Island
2 Spirebluff Canal
1 Mountain
1 Forest
1 Steam Vents
1 Breeding Pool
1 Stomping Ground
3 Blood Moon
3 Spreading Seas
1 Kozilek's Return
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Dismember
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Natural State
1 Stubborn Denial
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Flex
The reason I don't board in huntmaster is that I do not play huntmaster in the side. I play spreading seas instead. I would bring them in against merfolk if I had them.
I always try to make sure I have enough red and green sources in play so that when they spreading seas one of my lands, I will still be able to play my cards. This does mean I take a extra few points of damage fetching and shocking but it is usually worth it.
I board in my Ancient Grudges, Sweepers, and Engineered Explosives while taking out mana leak, a few copies of stubborn denial, and trimming a copy of hooting mandrills, thought scour, and a dismember. My reasoning is that their deck becomes much easier to beat without Aether Vial, so the grudges com in. The sweepers are a no duh! coming in. But as for cards to take out, Mana Leak is too inconsistent. Sure its one of our best answers to Master of Waves, but the chances of them drawing a cavern of souls by turn 4 is pretty high. Stubborn denial isn't completely dead against merfolk, so usually I leave in like 1-2 copies so I can try to win counterspell wars that we get in over removal. And then finally I take out a copy of hooting mandrills and a thought scour. Hooting mandrills is just soo clunky against them. They can mess up our casting it by playing relic of progenitus or bounce it back to our hand with a Harbinger of the tides, vapor snag it back to our hand, etc. So I trim a mandrills because of the clunck factor.
My plan against merfolk is to try and kill everything they play while clocking them with a threat. This is much easier when they don't have an Aether Vial out. Also, I have been noticing that Kozilek's Return is better than Anger of the Gods in this matchup. My opponents have been able to keep me off double red so that I am not even able to cast anger. But kozilek's return has been a blowout at times to their master of waves. One time, my opponent was attacking me with a Kira, the Great Glass spinner and two mutavaults. I cast a Kozilek's Return and the game was just over lol.
TL;DR, try to have as much interaction against merfolk as possible while trimming the clunk during sideboard. Killing their Aether Vials has been a winning strategy for me but I feel like I have been getting lucky to win some of these games.
Allow me to clarify:
Say I have a Spirebluff Canal and a Forest out on turn 2. I cast Spreading seas and target my spirebluff, turning into an island. I play, lets say, a stomping ground on turn 3 and slam a blood moon down. I will then have a stomping ground that is a mountain, a forest, and a spirebluff canal that is now an island. Thats what I was trying to say I was doing.
Edit: Hmmm, I guess I don't know how layering works. All I know is that I have had scenarios where I cast spreading seas on a land and I am able to tap for blue with a blood moon in play. Maybe I cast the spreading seas after the blood moon was in play...
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Hooting Mandrills
3 Snapcaster Mage
Instants (21)
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Tarfire
4 Mana Leak
3 Stubborn Denial
4 Thought Scour
1 Cryptic Command
1 Dismember
2 Vapor Snag
1 Simic Charm
4 Serum Visions
1 Forked Bolt
Lands (19)
2 Spirebluff Canal
1 Steam Vents
1 Breeding Pool
1 Stomping Ground
2 Island
1 Mountain
1 Forest
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Steam Vents
2 Wooded Foothills
3 Blood Moon
3 Spreading Seas
1 Natural State
1 Izzet Staticaster
2 Anger of the Gods
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Stubborn Denial
2 Threads of Disloyalty
Cards that have impressed me:
Cryptic Command:
this card has been a lot better than I thought it would be. It has been able to win games I could not have won otherwise where I tap out their entire team and swing for lethal or secure the final turns against a tron deck. One copy has been working out great in the maindeck.
Spreading Seas:
I saw Todd playing this card in his sideboard and thought it would be even better in combination with Blood Moon. I was not wrong. Opponents sometimes get cute and fetch around a blood moon, but then we can just tag their basics with spreading seas and get them good. (Note this works best against decks not playing Blue) There have even been scenarios where I dont have enough Islands in play for my blood moon and I just enchant one of my lands with a spreading seas before I play blood moon and then I have blue mana :D. Instead of trying to go toe-to-toe with the midrange and control decks and try to play a card advantage game (Huntmaster) I just board in the spreading seas and blood moon package and just try to disrupt their mana to make all their card advantage worthless and its been working pretty nicely for me especially against the death's shadow jund decks.
Natural State:
Being a one-mana destroy target artifact or enchantment has been pretty useful in regards to flashing it back quickly with a snapcaster mage. I like it over destructive revelry because of how cheap it costs to cast.
Izzet Staticaster:
This card has been a blow out against the go-wide decks who can just flood the board with dudes. Is it better or worse than pyroclasm or anger of the gods? I don't know yet. All I know is that the card has been good.
Cards that have dissapointed:
Simic Charm:
I usually end up siding out Simic charm in most of the matchups. Its not an exciting card to have and is usually just a worse version of the other cards in my deck. But the flexibility is nice to have in the main deck and I think the 1st Simic Charm is better than the 3rd Vapor Snag. I am looking for a better card to put in this slot (spell snare? spell pierce?) but am still testing it.
Threads of Disloyalty:
Threads' ceiling is stealing a Tarmogoyf, which is really good for us because we don't have many way other than this to deal with an opposing tarmogoyf. But against non tarmogoyf decks, trying to steal something has always been just a little too slow or just disastrous. (I stole a Jace, Vryn's Prodigy the other day and found out that it goes back under the opponent's control after it transforms) Not sure if it is a better dismember or a worse dismember. Also, if you steal an opponent's death shadow, it will just die if your lifetotal is higher than 13. So just think of it as a 3 mana removal spell for death's shadow and it starts to get less exciting. I haven't been able to steal a goyf yet, but I will be probably going down to 1 Threads of Disloyalty from now on and putting another counterspell in its place.
"Building Delver Decks with the Temur Box"
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/34650_Building-Delver-Decks-With-The-Temur-Box.html
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Hooting Mandrills
2 Snapcaster Mage
1 Simic Charm
1 Vapor Snag
3 Mana Leak
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Stubborn Denial
2 Spell Snare
2 Disrupting Shoal
1 Engineered Explosives
4 Thought Scour
4 Serum Visions
2 Sleight of Hand
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Steam Vents
1 Breeding Pool
1 Stomping Ground
2 Island
1 Forest
1 Spirebluff Canal
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Anger of the Gods
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Destructive Revelry
2 Disdainful Stroke
I am worried about the uptick in Fatal Push that is sure to abound. This deck is at its best when red based removal is king, not when Path or Fatal Push is premium. With the uptick in Death's Shadow, I expect more path to exile, terminates, and Fatal Pushes to be played. Another thing is that if people start shifting to decks/sideboard tech that is good against the hand disruption package the Abzan and Death's Shadow decks present, I sense our deck is in a good position to beat the decks that are trying to next level Abzan and Death's Shadow due to the fact of how good counterspells are in those matchups. I can't help but think now if that people want to play Traverse the Ulvenwald, Death's Shadow is a wayyy better Traverse deck than we are. It might be correct that if you want to play Traverse the Ulvenwald, then just play Death's Shadow because it is easier for them to achieve delirium and they also have better creatures that they are Traversing for.
From Blaze22's twitch stream
4 Hooting Mandrills
1 Snapcaster Mage
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Thought Scour
1 Simic Charm
4 Stubborn Denial
2 Spell Snare
3 Deprive
1 Vapor Snag
1 Spell Pierce
1 Forest
2 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Spirebluff Canal
1 Botanical Sanctum
2 Steam Vents
1 Breeding Pool
1 Stomping Ground
4 Serum Visions
4 Sleight of Hand
2 Tarfire
2 Natural State
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Pithing Needle
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Dismember
3 Blood Moon
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
1) They play Silence in the sideboard. Don't think you are safe just because you have a lightning bolt in your hand. They can just place Silence, and if you don't have countermagic for it, you can just die because you can't bolt their enabler.
2) Engineered Explosives is very good against them. Say they land a Puresteel Paladin and start to go off, if you have an Engineered Explosives on zero, just pop it in response to a Retract. This will not work however if they have multiple retracts. Also, EE gets around Silence.
3) Its often better to hold up interaction than just slamming a threat. Try to leave up a bolt or something at all times. This does slow us down but its risky to leave the shields down against this deck.
My reasoning is as follow:
In the grindy matchups where I want to board in both Huntmaster and Ancestral Vision, I have taken a page from Kevin Jones and Ryan Overturf's book and followed their advice of boarding out Delvers against Jeskai, Jund, and Grixis type of decks when you have Ancestral Vision in your sideboard. To quote Kevin Jones: "Sideboarding with Grixis Delver is pretty flexible and oftentimes obvious. Unsurprisingly, the issues lie in the gray areas. Ancestral Vision is often swapped for Delver of Secrets. Jeskai, Grixis Control, Abzan Midrange and possibly Jund are decks where you might seek to win an attrition game instead of a tempo based game. It often depends on play style though, if you think such a plan is overly anticipated by your opponent you can leave the Delvers in and get ’em. I also like doing this when there’s a short amount of time left in the round and am much more likely to do it on the play than on the draw."
Also, the more creatures, enchantments, and artifacts you put in your deck after sideboarding in a given matchups, the worse Delver becomes. Since I am not taking out Hooting Mandrills in these matchups, when I board in Huntmaster and Blood Moon I have to trim instants and sorceries. This just make Delver that much worse because now he is even more unreliable to flip. The deck's composition changes enough after sideboarding in these matchups to the degree where Delver starts to become the worst card in your deck (even if Delver is still a reasonable card). So basically against decks where Tempo'ing them out of the game is just not going to happen, Delver starts to look bad, especially considering when you are taking out instants and sorceries during games 2 and 3.
Ancestral Vision has been working out for me better than Bedlam Reveler has. I am still testing it out. The results are inconclusive.
My qualms with Bedlam Reveler are twofold:
1) Bedlam Reveler has too many hoops you have to jump through in order to make it work. I have found that the set up for him to be awkward and clunky.
2) If you are playing with Bedlam Reveler, you can't have Hooting Mandrills in your deck during games 2 and 3, which in some matchups, you really miss your Mandrills that can't die to Fatal Push.
Sources: http://articles.kirwansgamestore.com/2016/07/grixis-delver-primer-part-one/
http://articles.kirwansgamestore.com/2016/07/grixis-delver-primer-part-two/
Yeah ^ this.
Of those running Traverse, how many copies do y'all run? I run two copies, mostly due to the fact that it can be clunky in multiples and plus delirium is not always active during the game due to the tension between Hooting Mandrills and Traverse. And if you run Traverse in the sideboard, how many copies do you run?