I probably could have been more in depth, but it was my first one so fuk U!!! haha
Here it is:
No secrets.
By: Kolby Winn
Delver…. What a topic to start my first article ever
with. So, let’s get down to business.
Creatures:
4x Delver of secrets
4x snapcaster mage
4x Geist of saint traft
3x restoration angel
Instants
4x vapor snag
2x thought scour
3x gut shot
1x dismember
1x mutagenic growth
1x faith’s shield
3x mana leak
Sorcery
4x ponder
4x gitaxian probe
Artifact
2x runechanter’s pike
Land
4x seachrome coast
4x glacial fortress
7x island
2x cavern of souls
2x moorland haunt
1x plains
Sideboard
3x hero of bladehold
3x celestial purge
3x timely reinforcements
1x divine offering
2x mental misstep
1x mana leak
1x dissipate
1x surgical extraction
There is the deck list I will be taking to any near by
events this year. Statistics show that
delver is the deck the puts up the most wins by far.
Delver in a live setting is around 46.4% of the field, the
next biggest deck is at 9.6% which is naya pod or other naya aggro
strategies.
Delver is still the most winning!-est deck in the online
stats, which holds delver to 22.6% of the field. While this number is significantly less than
in live magic, it still means even after a huge online metagame shift where
decks like naya, zombies, and G/R aggro have made a huge surge in play, delver
is still winning due to how well streamed the deck and its components are.
The main deck is very similar to Yuuyu’s list with some
minor changes to increase flipping delvers and to decrease overabundance of
cards that you only need one per game of I.E. runechanter’s pike.
The sideboard is what I really want to talk about. People already know what delver is, looks
like, played against it, haunts them in their dreams J etc so it’s all about
the sidebeezy today.
3x celestial purge – This cards is obvious, it deals with black
or red cards, or zombies lol
Now this card also has a lot of hidden ability to take out
heartless summoning decks after Starcitygames writes about it and I play
against them online and destroy them. All
in all delver still crushes random tier 2 decks with ease.
3x hero of bladehold – this card just simply beats up on
removal, all of the aggro decks, and is just a solid dork to bash with. With hero being a ¾ he gets around silly
cards like slagstorm and beats R/g and naya’s crushing vines plan.
3x timely reinforcements – Pretty obvious that this card
just gets you more time vs aggro to set up hero or to get Geist equipped with a
pike and start racing.
2x mental misstep – This card is force of will for one
drops. It is great in the mirror and vs
the esper midrange decks as they will play their own ponders, scours, and
probes, if not their own delvers.
1x mana leak – this is the extra leak from the main
deck. You want to board it back in
against ramp and other control decks.
1x surgical extraction – This card is a spicy one and not
for the faint of heart. You simply
attack things you want to get rid of from the graveyard. Lingering souls, unburial rites and phantasmal
images are the main targets of this baby.
Pretty simple, you can also get cards out of their hand if you play it
right, as it’s always nice to probe then extract getting the lingering souls
out of their grave and their hand.
1x dissipate – pretty much just the nail in the coffin vs
control, they try to sit back and wait till they have a bunch of mana to stop
your mana leaks, meanwhile you’re beating face and then they try to wrath your
team and they just get crushed by dissipate because they think you don’t have
it. Sick tricks!
1x divine offering – destroy target artifact, gain life = to
CC pretty obvious here. Want to kill
sword? D.O.
Now delver has bad matchups.
Lets talk about some of these match ups to see what were up against.
R/g aggro
Creatures
4x birds of paradise
4x llanowar elves
4x stangleroot geist
4x huntmaster of the fells
2x hellrider
2x phyrexian metamorph
2x wolfir avenger
2x wolfir silverheart
Instants
2x incinerate
Sorcery
4x pillar of flames
3x bonfire of the damned
Artifacts
2x sword of war and peace
Planeswalkers
3x garruk relentless
Land
4x copperline gorge
4x rootbound crag
4x mountain
2x kessig wolf run
8x forest
Sideboard
3x zealous conscripts
1x wurmcoil engine
2x crushing vines
2x combust
2x ancient grudge
2x beast within
1x phyrexian metamorph
2x whipflare
Now looking at this list, which is the list Scott came up
with last week for the cash event at bluegrass, we can see why this deck
presents a bad problem for delver.
Bonfires, swords, efficient creatures, effective sideboard plan.
They have it all, all delver can do here is race them and
hope they don’t draw any power creatures and all lands. This is definitely one of those “hope they
just give up” match ups for delver.
I’m going to try to sum things up by getting what we want to
see, which are decklists and what a bad matchup and a coin flip matchup for the
“best deck in the format” is. This way
we have the decklists for the team and everyone can see what colors/cards make
the matchups good or bad for delver.
The coinflip matchup is Esper midrange. This deck is essentially a delver deck, minus
vapor snags add doom blades and a couple lingering souls, and add a sun titan
package which you lose a little value in the delver mirror but you gain value
against the more aggressive strategies.
Creatures
4x blade splicer
4x restoration angel
4x snapcaster mage
3x phantasmal image
1x sun titan
Planeswalkers
1x Gideon jura
Instants
2x doomblade
1x go for the throat
1x forbidden alchemy
2x gut shot
4x mana leak
3x thought scour
Sorcery
4x ponder
1x gitaxian probe
2x Lingering souls
Enchantment
1x oblivion ring
Land
4x seachrome coast
4x darkslick shores
2x drowned catacombs
2x glacial fortress
2x evolving wilds
3x island
2x plains
1x swamp
1x vault of the archangel
1x moorland haunt
Sideboard
3x celestial purge
2x timely reinforcements
2x day of judgment
1x oblivion ring
1x phantasmal image
2x dissipate
1x tamiyo the moon sage
1x divine offering
1x surgical extraction
1x go for the throat
These decks are all fantastic choices for the ptq
season. They each have there place in
the metagame all doing something different.
However delver is still to me and a lot of people the “best deck” so I
will be playing delver at the next standard event I run into. One thing I would like to mention as we wrap
things up today is I didn’t go over a control deck strategy in the
article. Control has been rather
inconsistent in this metagame. The card
choices that would allow them to play control competitively aren’t really there
in my opinion, and they haven’t been putting up the results. However aggro is making a surge, and when
aggro makes a surge control will find a way to get its hands dirty in the form
of mono black control or maybe U/W miracles.
But delver has a great matchup against those strategies and wants to see
more controlling strategies when playing.
So much for that, I hope this article at least helped you
solidify your list or even better if you’re making the jump to delver J
Thanks for listening!
Kolby Tyler Winn
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