I completely disagree. Have you seen the articles pros are writing? I can give you the link to one that Drew Levin said the exact same thing I did. The title of his article was "the cycle is complete" but I guess he doesnt really know what he is talking about...
A lot of the pros are reluctant to say negative things about magic cards, especially when cards are new. They are incentivized to not bite the hand that feeds them.
He is just has high variant as Delver, Stoneforge Mystic. He gives so much value. You said it happens often that you dont play anything on the next turn you have him out so you dont get a token right away because you may want to leave counter magic up. Do you realize how good this is? Countering a relevant spell then getting a creature off it is insane. In your other senario okay so the killed your guy with you getting no value out of it. That like saying Tarmogoyf is terrible because removal spells exist. If you cast him and dies he is poop. That is just an invalid argument.
Yes delver has very high variance in modern. But delver is not part of the cycle. I'm not sure how SFM is considered a high variance card. If you have all your equipment out, and you draw your 3rd SFM, that's another body to use the equipment that you have on the battlefield. If you draw another YP when you're hellbent, it's not very impressive.
The thing with tarmogoyf is that it's resilient to bolt, helix and electrolyze. If you're letting tarmogoyf die to bolt you're probably playing incorrectly.
YP is very fragile, it dies to those aforementioned cards. What if you have snare and they use bolt? What if they have enough mana to play around spell pierce? These situational counters are very inconsistent. It's not like you have a one mana instant speed cantrip that can let you shuffle them away for new cards.
Being weak to electrolyze is horrible. It's a 2 or 3 for one against you. At least bolt or helix is just a 1 for 1.
The real star of the UR deck is delver and the fact that a lot of decks start at 15-18 life in modern. If you have a flipped delver on turn 2, you're going to use your counter magic to protect it and try to go all the way. And when that delver finally dies, you used up some of your resources which makes that YP in your hand worse. You're rarely going to slam that red 2 drop and hope to go off on turn 3 in that situation.
Wanting to play your 2 drop on turns 3/4/5 seems like a strange thing to do in a tempo deck.
You dismissing it so quickly is the wrong thing to do.
I've played around 75 games with the card. I've watched pros stream with the card. I've watched mtgo replays where people play the card. It's very mediocre, the variance is real.
I think people are just too enamored with making 4 tokens with the card. They don't remember the games where their spells in hand did not effect the gamestate so they couldn't make tokens profitably. People aren't giving enough credit to delver, or the fact that burn backed up with counter spells is a viable strategy (see UWR control).
Has anyone tried unified will with yp? Tempo decks are often ahead on guys against non aggro, and the excess 1/1's generated for later should mean that this is a hard counter for 2
Hmm, I watched a bunch of replays from DEs yesterday, all from people playing the UR Delver/YP deck. Most of their wins will come from Delver backed by cheap counters and Snap + burn. I saw two guys that went 4-0 and have played YP once during the entire event.
YP is very fragile, it dies to those aforementioned cards. What if you have snare and they use bolt? What if they have enough mana to play around spell pierce? These situational counters are very inconsistent. It's not like you have a one mana instant speed cantrip that can let you shuffle them away for new cards.
Being weak to electrolyze is horrible. It's a 2 or 3 for one against you. At least bolt or helix is just a 1 for 1.
You could say the EXACT same thing about Dark Confidant.
I am also aware being weak to electrolyze is not the best thing, but there are Tier 1 Decks that are weak to it and seem to keep on winning. How does that work?:o
I also agree with you that the have incentive to write articles about new cards and say good things about them, but they do get to chose the cards they write about. No one is telling them what to write about. If they didnt think it was actually good they wouldnt say anything.
I believe the argument revolves around the fact that you dedicate a big chunk of your deck for cards like Gitaxian Probe only to get value out of YP and in case it dies before that you're now left with a bunch of suboptimal spells to play. That's why if you're up against a deck with Bolt or other cheap removal you don't want to tap out to play YP, it's a big loss of tempo and value.
With Dark Confidant it's a bit different: if it dies immediately it's still bad because you got nothing out of your 2 mana investment, but at least you don't play suboptimal cards only to interact with it.
That's not saying YP is good or bad, it's a fact: you're investing a lot on a card that depends on other things happening to be good (as opposed to Goyf, for example), so there's a good upside and an awful downside too. You gotta learn to play around that and evaluate whether the benefits are greater or you should be playing something else in these slots.
There are a lot of people getting 3-1's and 4-0's just out of sheer volume. To get a real picture of how good/bad these decks are we still need to give time to time and wait for things to settle down a bit. I'm still waiting to form an opinion.
lucashungaro:
Your agrument that people are winning with these YP decks because of the sheer volume. Wouldnt you just assume lots of people are playing because they all think it is good? If it wasnt good it wouldnt be winning these Dailys. Sheer volume has nothing to do with it. 3/4 of the people could be playing red white samurai deck and none of them would win Dailys, so I dont really think this argument works. People play decks and cards because they believe they are good, and can out play other decks.
Young Pyromancer is fine, the most important thing is it goes pretty well with Delver/Confidant/Snapcaster. All of these creatures benefit from having a deck with lots of cheap interactive spells. The main competition for the slot is Deathrite and Clique and currently I think YP is a marginal upgrade.
YP does a better job of fitting the theme and synergizing with the same kinds of cards already in the deck. Confidant is obviously way more powerful, but at least YP gives you the redundancy to make a more consistent game plan of "untap with my two drop, trade my spells for their cards and I will get ahead."
My two cents.
Also, here is the list I am currently playing, but still refining.
Feel free to critique/make suggestions.
lucashungaro:
Your agrument that people are winning with these YP decks because of the sheer volume. Wouldnt you just assume lots of people are playing because they all think it is good? If it wasnt good it wouldnt be winning these Dailys. Sheer volume has nothing to do with it. 3/4 of the people could be playing red white samurai deck and none of them would win Dailys, so I dont really think this argument works. People play decks and cards because they believe they are good, and can out play other decks.
That's exactly what happens with every hyped card on the weeks following it's launch online. It's a known pattern.
You guys are missing the point because you're on tunnel vision mode. Give a neutral read to the arguments made here. We're pointing the downsides of playing the card, not saying it's unplayable or something. You guys are saying it's the most awesome card ever printed in the history of Magic, it has no downsides and OMG why isn't every player in the world using it??!?
All I'm saying is: be aware of the downsides, consider alternatives, don't be fooled by hype. I'm watching lots of replays everyday and I can affirm most of the guys placing well on DEs are winning on the back of Delvers and Sanpcasters, they barely cast YP. That's something to consider.
There's a recent article by PV that can be useful in cases like this: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/pvs-playhouse-seven-playtesting-traps-2/. If people are winning with the tempo shell without ever using YP, then maybe the shell is good, but the card isn't necessary? Jeff Hoogland got a top 16 at GP KC playing Spellstutter Sprite in these slots. He streams DEs with the deck here (http://www.twitch.tv/deathstarmtg), tried YP and went back to Sprite saying that "YP is by far the weakest card and strictly worse than Sprite".
To me that's how we measure it: play the deck with YP and without YP, compare the results, watch replays, streams etc.
As I already stated, I still have no opinion about the playability of this card, only time will tell that. I'm presenting concrete evidences that back my current point of view (that the card may be unneeded). Blindly defending something as if it had no weak points is pointless.
If this turns out to be awesome indeed I'll be happy because I love the UR/x Tempo archetype and Grixis is my favorite shard, so I'll shut up, get the card, build the deck and play it until my computer breaks hahah.
Young Pyromancer is fine, the most important thing is it goes pretty well with Delver/Confidant/Snapcaster. All of these creatures benefit from having a deck with lots of cheap interactive spells. The main competition for the slot is Deathrite and Clique and currently I think YP is a marginal upgrade.
YP does a better job of fitting the theme and synergizing with the same kinds of cards already in the deck. Confidant is obviously way more powerful, but at least YP gives you the redundancy to make a more consistent game plan of "untap with my two drop, trade my spells for their cards and I will get ahead."
My two cents.
Also, here is the list I am currently playing, but still refining.
Feel free to critique/make suggestions.
I like the look of this list.
I would try to round out some of the spells though. There are a lot of 2 ofs which may hurt your consistency. Is Cryptic Command working for you? It seems very mana intensive for this deck. 4 CMC is a lot. I would like to see at least one more Mana Leak, and Probably 1 more Terminate, potentially one more Elctrolyze.
What are your thoughts on 3 Iok, and 2 Thoughtseize main?
Do you like the full set of Probes and Serum Visions? I probably wouldnt play Serum Visions myself.
Apart from that looks very solid. The SB looks good too. What do you bring Sword of Light and Shadow in against? Again I would like the 2 Thoughtseize in the main, open some SB slots for maybe like cards like Surgical Extraction, Sowing Salt, Slaughter Games, Rakdos Charm, ect. I like to see you have Jace Beleren in the Sb, how is he working for you? Do you just jam him in the control match up?
That's exactly what happens with every hyped card on the weeks following it's launch online. It's a known pattern.
You guys are missing the point because you're on tunnel vision mode. Give a neutral read to the arguments made here. We're pointing the downsides of playing the card, not saying it's unplayable or something. You guys are saying it's the most awesome card ever printed in the history of Magic, it has no downsides and OMG why isn't every player in the world using it??!?
All I'm saying is: be aware of the downsides, consider alternatives, don't be fooled by hype. I'm watching lots of replays everyday and I can affirm most of the guys placing well on DEs are winning on the back of Delvers and Sanpcasters, they barely cast YP. That's something to consider.
There's a recent article by PV that can be useful in cases like this: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/pvs-playhouse-seven-playtesting-traps-2/. If people are winning with the tempo shell without ever using YP, then maybe the shell is good, but the card isn't necessary? Jeff Hoogland got a top 16 at GP KC playing Spellstutter Sprite in these slots. He streams DEs with the deck here (http://www.twitch.tv/deathstarmtg), tried YP and went back to Sprite saying that "YP is by far the weakest card and strictly worse than Sprite".
To me that's how we measure it: play the deck with YP and without YP, compare the results, watch replays, streams etc.
As I already stated, I still have no opinion about the playability of this card, only time will tell that. I'm presenting concrete evidences that back my current point of view (that the card may be unneeded). Blindly defending something as if it had no weak points is pointless.
If this turns out to be awesome indeed I'll be happy because I love the UR/x Tempo archetype and Grixis is my favorite shard, so I'll shut up, get the card, build the deck and play it until my computer breaks hahah.
Obviously every card has down sides. Not once did I say this card is the best card ever printed in Magic or anything of that nature. I just believe it is very good, and has mass amount of potential. I also never said it has no downsides. It does. All magic cards do. Thats absurd to say.
A lot of these decks do typically win off the back of Delver and Snapcaster. Going Bolt, Snap Bolt, is one of the strongest things you can do.
Sure Jeff Hoogland plays Spellstutter Sprite over him. That is fine. I dont see why when it can only counter 1 CMC cards. Its just a preference thing.
Well, it counters the cards you want to counter the most: Bolt, Path and Spell Snare. With Mutavault he can also counter 2cc spells. Most YP decks are playing Spell Pierce MD to counter the same cards (with the bonus of countering early Electrolyzes).
The great conflict I see with YP is that you don't want to run it into removal, so tapping out to play it on turn 2 is usually bad... but curving out is what a tempo deck wants to do. You also don't want to wait too much because you lose value with each cheap spell you cast without YP on the board. There's a balance to be found there.
Well, it counters the cards you want to counter the most: Bolt, Path and Spell Snare. With Mutavault he can also counter 2cc spells. Most YP decks are playing Spell Pierce MD to counter the same cards (with the bonus of countering early Electrolyzes).
The great conflict I see with YP is that you don't want to run it into removal, so tapping out to play it on turn 2 is usually bad... but curving out is what a tempo deck wants to do. You also don't want to wait too much because you lose value with each cheap spell you cast without YP on the board. There's a balance to be found there.
You definitely want to run him out on the 2 if can. The only issue i can see is having Bob, and YP in your opener. Deciding which is best to lead could be hard. That just comes with playing the deck a lot, and the match up you're in. If they just kill out right, oh well, the same with when they kill your Bob right away. Not much you can really do.
so i haven't played this version of delver yet but i am going to proxy a list up to try so here is a list i am trying to figure it out
4 delver of secrets
4 stromkirk noble
4 dark confidant
4 snapcaster mage, or 3 snapcaster mage
1 vendilion clique, or 1 olivia, or if i go three snaps 2 specters or two abyssal persecutor, or even two young pyromancer
Spells 22
4 inquisition of kozilek
2 thought seize
4 mana leak
2 terminate
4 lightning bolt
3 magma jet
1 pillar of flame, or third terminate
2 electrolyze, or cut pillar and electrolyze add 3 bightning
I would personally max out on Young Pyromancer. That card gives you so much value. I would actually cut either a V-Clique or a Snapcaster Mage.
Some other changes I would personally make is:
-1 Grixes Charm: You dont really need the pump ability on it. This isnt really an aggro deck, and the other two modes on it is just okay.
-1 Rise//Fall: Just isnt that fantastic. Not what you want to be doing in a deck like this. Just feels a little derdly.
-1 IoK- Should be thoughtseize.
Now that adds:
+2 Thoughtseize: Just need to diversify your discard suite.
+1 Electrolyze: This card is the nutter butters.
As for the SB:
I dont like grafdiggers cage all that much. If youre worried about reanimator, and Melira Pod, then you should be playing Rakdos Charm. Removing the graveyard is very good at instant speed. Its a spell that flips delver and for pyromanncer and snappy. Also is good against twin, and kiki pod on the mode for each player loses life equal to the number of creatures they have. It is also good againt Affinity which might be a rough matchup. More Lilianas, and I wouldnt play geths verdict. I would play devour flesh instead. Also another good thing about putting the 2 Thoughtseize back in the main is that you open up more slots in the SB. If you find life loss is being a problem for you, you need to look at how youre piloting the deck, it shouldnt be that big of a deal since you playing a pseudo control deck. Im not sure why you want spell snare in the bored. Just some of my opinions though.
Thanks for your critique. I took the revisions under consideration but before making any changes I wanted to give the deck another shot as I built it. I went 4-0 and won my local tournament (with 1 total loss in all matches). I did change up the sideboard a bit mainly adding smash to smithereens, engineered explosives, and black sun's zenith. I removed torpor orbs and grafdigger's cage.
Grixis Charm and Rise // Fall were invaluable in multiple situations. I never actually used the charm to pump because it usually became a kill or bounce spell. Having the option to pump is relevant in this deck because of the amount of extra damage it can do. It can also make your weenies trade with larger creatures. I used Fall twice in games and Rise once. One of the falls got a blood moon which I previously remanded - if it didn't I would have lost the game. Rise is so good as a cantrip allowing you to bounce something fat and in the way while returning a snapcaster or young pyromancer (which eats removal like a champ by the way).
I have yet to really win with a Young Pyromancer - however he was just as useful generating chump blockers as a win condition keeping me in games with heavy creature pressure. I still mostly win with snapcaster, tarpit, and clique beats after I have exhausted the opponent. This deck runs much better as a control deck than an aggro deck. I am considering removing Delvers for additional removal/counters.
As always, untapping with dark confidant won many games (mainly the two versus death and taxes).
We are super weak to blood moon and that was a reality at the last tournament. Countersquall in the SB was my answer and it worked. I am going to ponder this, however.
I will post a full list soon of my edits and tweaks. Its been a long time working on this deck and it felt very good to finally snatch a victory with it.
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Young Pyromancer is fine, the most important thing is it goes pretty well with Delver/Confidant/Snapcaster. All of these creatures benefit from having a deck with lots of cheap interactive spells. The main competition for the slot is Deathrite and Clique and currently I think YP is a marginal upgrade.
YP does a better job of fitting the theme and synergizing with the same kinds of cards already in the deck. Confidant is obviously way more powerful, but at least YP gives you the redundancy to make a more consistent game plan of "untap with my two drop, trade my spells for their cards and I will get ahead."
My two cents.
Also, here is the list I am currently playing, but still refining.
Feel free to critique/make suggestions.
Holy Crap! It is hard to find people discussing Grixis in this new "Young Pyromancer SCD" thread! People need to go out and test their stuff. Saying "this pro said this" and "this pro said that" is pretty lame. Try it out and back up your statements with actual experiences - because anything else is useless to the rest of us. Or use a PM.
So I really like this decklist Jade (probably because it is very close to mine). I noticed a lack of remand and a surplus of gitaxian probe. That is the only change I would make. I don't think it is wise to add this weak cantrip in place of the best counter spell in modern just to get the possible free creature (at that point it is no longer free anyway). Remand is so much better on the play that I started siding it out for games where I am on the draw for more "final" spells of the things I would want to use remand on anyway (like Izzet Charm, countersquall, and removal spells).
My experience with Young Pyromancer is this: He works in a very similar way to Dark Confidant in this deck. Pretty much I untap with my 2 drop and begin to get card advantage. The tokens are amazing at chumping tarmogoyf while you fly in with delver or clique. It is almost a way of soft-locking (very soft) creature decks out. They also ping away at life more than many might give them credit for. I slo have no problem dropping my YP on T2 so it can eat the bolt and I can return next with a dark confidant and a delver, or any other combo of awesome this deck can produce. I like YP as more of a "backup and support" creature that fits very well into this deck than the thing I am building around and that's why I have him at 3 in my deck. He has no problem taking advantage of all the cheap spells in the deck while occasionally swinging in for 2 damage with burn backup.
YP, imho is not nearly as good as the other 2 drops in the cycle. As one other poster said, he is not the 2 drop we need, but the 2 drop we deserve. That being said, he is a well balanced and solid card that works well in this shell. Some people might argue that the other 2 drops are overpowered (and too expensive). Maybe this is wizards' way of saying "here you go - this one is balanced and affordable". So maybe its the best we will get for red in the cycle.
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Thank you very much! we in the thread appreciate the move out of the modern archives.
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A lot of the pros are reluctant to say negative things about magic cards, especially when cards are new. They are incentivized to not bite the hand that feeds them.
Yes delver has very high variance in modern. But delver is not part of the cycle. I'm not sure how SFM is considered a high variance card. If you have all your equipment out, and you draw your 3rd SFM, that's another body to use the equipment that you have on the battlefield. If you draw another YP when you're hellbent, it's not very impressive.
The thing with tarmogoyf is that it's resilient to bolt, helix and electrolyze. If you're letting tarmogoyf die to bolt you're probably playing incorrectly.
YP is very fragile, it dies to those aforementioned cards. What if you have snare and they use bolt? What if they have enough mana to play around spell pierce? These situational counters are very inconsistent. It's not like you have a one mana instant speed cantrip that can let you shuffle them away for new cards.
Being weak to electrolyze is horrible. It's a 2 or 3 for one against you. At least bolt or helix is just a 1 for 1.
The real star of the UR deck is delver and the fact that a lot of decks start at 15-18 life in modern. If you have a flipped delver on turn 2, you're going to use your counter magic to protect it and try to go all the way. And when that delver finally dies, you used up some of your resources which makes that YP in your hand worse. You're rarely going to slam that red 2 drop and hope to go off on turn 3 in that situation.
Wanting to play your 2 drop on turns 3/4/5 seems like a strange thing to do in a tempo deck.
I've played around 75 games with the card. I've watched pros stream with the card. I've watched mtgo replays where people play the card. It's very mediocre, the variance is real.
I think people are just too enamored with making 4 tokens with the card. They don't remember the games where their spells in hand did not effect the gamestate so they couldn't make tokens profitably. People aren't giving enough credit to delver, or the fact that burn backed up with counter spells is a viable strategy (see UWR control).
You could say the EXACT same thing about Dark Confidant.
I am also aware being weak to electrolyze is not the best thing, but there are Tier 1 Decks that are weak to it and seem to keep on winning. How does that work?:o
I also agree with you that the have incentive to write articles about new cards and say good things about them, but they do get to chose the cards they write about. No one is telling them what to write about. If they didnt think it was actually good they wouldnt say anything.
Great strawman. You don't need spells in your hand to make Dark Confidant do something.
With Dark Confidant it's a bit different: if it dies immediately it's still bad because you got nothing out of your 2 mana investment, but at least you don't play suboptimal cards only to interact with it.
That's not saying YP is good or bad, it's a fact: you're investing a lot on a card that depends on other things happening to be good (as opposed to Goyf, for example), so there's a good upside and an awful downside too. You gotta learn to play around that and evaluate whether the benefits are greater or you should be playing something else in these slots.
There are a lot of people getting 3-1's and 4-0's just out of sheer volume. To get a real picture of how good/bad these decks are we still need to give time to time and wait for things to settle down a bit. I'm still waiting to form an opinion.
lucashungaro:
Your agrument that people are winning with these YP decks because of the sheer volume. Wouldnt you just assume lots of people are playing because they all think it is good? If it wasnt good it wouldnt be winning these Dailys. Sheer volume has nothing to do with it. 3/4 of the people could be playing red white samurai deck and none of them would win Dailys, so I dont really think this argument works. People play decks and cards because they believe they are good, and can out play other decks.
YP does a better job of fitting the theme and synergizing with the same kinds of cards already in the deck. Confidant is obviously way more powerful, but at least YP gives you the redundancy to make a more consistent game plan of "untap with my two drop, trade my spells for their cards and I will get ahead."
My two cents.
Also, here is the list I am currently playing, but still refining.
Feel free to critique/make suggestions.
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Dark Confidant
4 Young Pyromancer
4 Snapcaster Mage
[12] Instants:
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Terminate
2 Mana Leak
2 Electrolyze
2 Cryptic Command
[11] Sorcery:
4x Serum Visions
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Gitaxian Probe
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Darkslick Shores
2 Watery Grave
2 Steam Vents
2 Island
1 Mountain
3 Creeping Tarpit
2 Magma Spray
3 Devour Flesh
2 Spell Pierce
2 Thoughtseize
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Shadow of Doubt
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
1 Jace Belern
That's exactly what happens with every hyped card on the weeks following it's launch online. It's a known pattern.
You guys are missing the point because you're on tunnel vision mode. Give a neutral read to the arguments made here. We're pointing the downsides of playing the card, not saying it's unplayable or something. You guys are saying it's the most awesome card ever printed in the history of Magic, it has no downsides and OMG why isn't every player in the world using it??!?
All I'm saying is: be aware of the downsides, consider alternatives, don't be fooled by hype. I'm watching lots of replays everyday and I can affirm most of the guys placing well on DEs are winning on the back of Delvers and Sanpcasters, they barely cast YP. That's something to consider.
There's a recent article by PV that can be useful in cases like this: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/pvs-playhouse-seven-playtesting-traps-2/. If people are winning with the tempo shell without ever using YP, then maybe the shell is good, but the card isn't necessary? Jeff Hoogland got a top 16 at GP KC playing Spellstutter Sprite in these slots. He streams DEs with the deck here (http://www.twitch.tv/deathstarmtg), tried YP and went back to Sprite saying that "YP is by far the weakest card and strictly worse than Sprite".
To me that's how we measure it: play the deck with YP and without YP, compare the results, watch replays, streams etc.
As I already stated, I still have no opinion about the playability of this card, only time will tell that. I'm presenting concrete evidences that back my current point of view (that the card may be unneeded). Blindly defending something as if it had no weak points is pointless.
If this turns out to be awesome indeed I'll be happy because I love the UR/x Tempo archetype and Grixis is my favorite shard, so I'll shut up, get the card, build the deck and play it until my computer breaks hahah.
I like the look of this list.
I would try to round out some of the spells though. There are a lot of 2 ofs which may hurt your consistency. Is Cryptic Command working for you? It seems very mana intensive for this deck. 4 CMC is a lot. I would like to see at least one more Mana Leak, and Probably 1 more Terminate, potentially one more Elctrolyze.
What are your thoughts on 3 Iok, and 2 Thoughtseize main?
Do you like the full set of Probes and Serum Visions? I probably wouldnt play Serum Visions myself.
Apart from that looks very solid. The SB looks good too. What do you bring Sword of Light and Shadow in against? Again I would like the 2 Thoughtseize in the main, open some SB slots for maybe like cards like Surgical Extraction, Sowing Salt, Slaughter Games, Rakdos Charm, ect. I like to see you have Jace Beleren in the Sb, how is he working for you? Do you just jam him in the control match up?
Obviously every card has down sides. Not once did I say this card is the best card ever printed in Magic or anything of that nature. I just believe it is very good, and has mass amount of potential. I also never said it has no downsides. It does. All magic cards do. Thats absurd to say.
A lot of these decks do typically win off the back of Delver and Snapcaster. Going Bolt, Snap Bolt, is one of the strongest things you can do.
Sure Jeff Hoogland plays Spellstutter Sprite over him. That is fine. I dont see why when it can only counter 1 CMC cards. Its just a preference thing.
The great conflict I see with YP is that you don't want to run it into removal, so tapping out to play it on turn 2 is usually bad... but curving out is what a tempo deck wants to do. You also don't want to wait too much because you lose value with each cheap spell you cast without YP on the board. There's a balance to be found there.
You definitely want to run him out on the 2 if can. The only issue i can see is having Bob, and YP in your opener. Deciding which is best to lead could be hard. That just comes with playing the deck a lot, and the match up you're in. If they just kill out right, oh well, the same with when they kill your Bob right away. Not much you can really do.
4 delver of secrets
4 stromkirk noble
4 dark confidant
4 snapcaster mage, or 3 snapcaster mage
1 vendilion clique, or 1 olivia, or if i go three snaps 2 specters or two abyssal persecutor, or even two young pyromancer
Spells 22
4 inquisition of kozilek
2 thought seize
4 mana leak
2 terminate
4 lightning bolt
3 magma jet
1 pillar of flame, or third terminate
2 electrolyze, or cut pillar and electrolyze add 3 bightning
Land 21
4 scalding tarn
2 arid mesa
1 island
1 mountain
1 swamp
3 creeping tarpit
2 steam vents
2 blood crypt
1 watery grave
2 black cleave cliffs
1 ghost quarter
1 darkslick shores
Thanks for your critique. I took the revisions under consideration but before making any changes I wanted to give the deck another shot as I built it. I went 4-0 and won my local tournament (with 1 total loss in all matches). I did change up the sideboard a bit mainly adding smash to smithereens, engineered explosives, and black sun's zenith. I removed torpor orbs and grafdigger's cage.
Grixis Charm and Rise // Fall were invaluable in multiple situations. I never actually used the charm to pump because it usually became a kill or bounce spell. Having the option to pump is relevant in this deck because of the amount of extra damage it can do. It can also make your weenies trade with larger creatures. I used Fall twice in games and Rise once. One of the falls got a blood moon which I previously remanded - if it didn't I would have lost the game. Rise is so good as a cantrip allowing you to bounce something fat and in the way while returning a snapcaster or young pyromancer (which eats removal like a champ by the way).
I have yet to really win with a Young Pyromancer - however he was just as useful generating chump blockers as a win condition keeping me in games with heavy creature pressure. I still mostly win with snapcaster, tarpit, and clique beats after I have exhausted the opponent. This deck runs much better as a control deck than an aggro deck. I am considering removing Delvers for additional removal/counters.
As always, untapping with dark confidant won many games (mainly the two versus death and taxes).
We are super weak to blood moon and that was a reality at the last tournament. Countersquall in the SB was my answer and it worked. I am going to ponder this, however.
I will post a full list soon of my edits and tweaks. Its been a long time working on this deck and it felt very good to finally snatch a victory with it.
Modern: RGB Dredge // RBG Goblins // B The Gate // UBR Tezz AoB Control // RBG Prison Pox
EDH: RBU Thraximundar // R Norin the Wary // RWB Kaalia of the Vast // BUR Grixis Combos // BU Gisa and Geralf Tribal
Tiny Leaders: BUW Sydri, Galvanic Genius // R Feldon of the Third Path
Projects:
Gisa and Geralf Extreme-Tribal EDH
Esper Eldrazi Processor Control
Brewing with Kuldotha Forgemaster
Primer: "The Gate" - Mono Black in Modern
Modern Prison Pox - building a better plague
Holy Crap! It is hard to find people discussing Grixis in this new "Young Pyromancer SCD" thread! People need to go out and test their stuff. Saying "this pro said this" and "this pro said that" is pretty lame. Try it out and back up your statements with actual experiences - because anything else is useless to the rest of us. Or use a PM.
So I really like this decklist Jade (probably because it is very close to mine). I noticed a lack of remand and a surplus of gitaxian probe. That is the only change I would make. I don't think it is wise to add this weak cantrip in place of the best counter spell in modern just to get the possible free creature (at that point it is no longer free anyway). Remand is so much better on the play that I started siding it out for games where I am on the draw for more "final" spells of the things I would want to use remand on anyway (like Izzet Charm, countersquall, and removal spells).
My experience with Young Pyromancer is this: He works in a very similar way to Dark Confidant in this deck. Pretty much I untap with my 2 drop and begin to get card advantage. The tokens are amazing at chumping tarmogoyf while you fly in with delver or clique. It is almost a way of soft-locking (very soft) creature decks out. They also ping away at life more than many might give them credit for. I slo have no problem dropping my YP on T2 so it can eat the bolt and I can return next with a dark confidant and a delver, or any other combo of awesome this deck can produce. I like YP as more of a "backup and support" creature that fits very well into this deck than the thing I am building around and that's why I have him at 3 in my deck. He has no problem taking advantage of all the cheap spells in the deck while occasionally swinging in for 2 damage with burn backup.
YP, imho is not nearly as good as the other 2 drops in the cycle. As one other poster said, he is not the 2 drop we need, but the 2 drop we deserve. That being said, he is a well balanced and solid card that works well in this shell. Some people might argue that the other 2 drops are overpowered (and too expensive). Maybe this is wizards' way of saying "here you go - this one is balanced and affordable". So maybe its the best we will get for red in the cycle.
Modern: RGB Dredge // RBG Goblins // B The Gate // UBR Tezz AoB Control // RBG Prison Pox
EDH: RBU Thraximundar // R Norin the Wary // RWB Kaalia of the Vast // BUR Grixis Combos // BU Gisa and Geralf Tribal
Tiny Leaders: BUW Sydri, Galvanic Genius // R Feldon of the Third Path
Projects:
Gisa and Geralf Extreme-Tribal EDH
Esper Eldrazi Processor Control
Brewing with Kuldotha Forgemaster
Primer: "The Gate" - Mono Black in Modern
Modern Prison Pox - building a better plague
Thank you very much! we in the thread appreciate the move out of the modern archives.
Modern: RGB Dredge // RBG Goblins // B The Gate // UBR Tezz AoB Control // RBG Prison Pox
EDH: RBU Thraximundar // R Norin the Wary // RWB Kaalia of the Vast // BUR Grixis Combos // BU Gisa and Geralf Tribal
Tiny Leaders: BUW Sydri, Galvanic Genius // R Feldon of the Third Path
Projects:
Gisa and Geralf Extreme-Tribal EDH
Esper Eldrazi Processor Control
Brewing with Kuldotha Forgemaster
Primer: "The Gate" - Mono Black in Modern
Modern Prison Pox - building a better plague
2x Blackcleave Cliffs
2x Blood Crypt
2x Creeping Tar pit
3x Darkslick Shores
2x Dragonskull Summit
2x Island
4x Scalding Tarn
1x Steam Vents
1x Sulfur Falls
1x Swamp
1x Watery Grave
Creatures: 15
4x Dark Confidant
2x Deathrite Shaman
3x Snapcaster Mage
2x Vendilion Clique
4x Young Pyromancer
2x Dismember
2x Electrolyze
4x Gitaxian Probe
2x Izzet Charm
4x Lightning Bolt
1x Nightcreep
3x Remand
2x Shadow of Doubt
Sorceries: 4
4x Serum Visions
2x Geth's verdict
2x Liliana of the Veil
3x Magma Spray
3x Rakdos Charm
3x Sowing Salt
2x Spell Pierce